My band story 2. The second part of what I hope will eventually be a fair telling of my personal band story and its effect on my life. I recommend that you read part 1 before reading this post.
Terry
Mom and Dad found a new instructor for me. This guy was much more serious. We had our lesson times in his garage.
Two chairs and a music stand in the middle of a dimly lit, musty garage. Conjure up images of the cool, musty cell with the swinging light bulb over head.
“Play it again!” “Stay in time!” “Do you need glasses!”
There’s a syndrome in sports known as the ‘sophomore jinx’. This describes what sometimes happens to an athlete after an initially successful year, or season.
That was me with Terry. I couldn’t do anything right for that guy. I had started trumpet well, but I was beginning to show signs that would eventually lead me to switch to euphonium.
Terry loved to tap the music stand with his pencil. His pencil looked like a tiny beaver had gone to work on it. It was worn down almost to the lead core.
During one of my lessons he was rapping away with his pencil and it snapped in two. He blurted out an expletive that I wasn’t used to hearing.
I started to crack up but tried to hold it in and keep playing. I ended up blowing boogers out of my nose.
Terry wasn’t the nicest guy, but he wasn’t picking on my ears. He took trumpet playing seriously and he was demanding that I WORK HARDER!
He wasn’t Terence Fletcher, but he impressed on me the value and importance of getting things right.
We didn’t spend that long together. I’m not sure what happened. Maybe he didn’t want to teach lessons any more. Maybe he was tired of working with this little kid who still didn’t understand this band thing.