#SOL16 Day 12 The Clarinet

When I was in the third grade, we were finally allowed to choose an instrument to learn to play. My choice: the drums! My mother's choice for me: the clarinet. She didn't think girls played the drums. So I took clarinet lessons. 

It was difficult. Hard to blow air, move my fingers, make the right type of sound. "Hot Cross Buns" came out slow and torturous, yet the only song I could play. Practicing was hard and joyless and my family likened my playing to a dying duck on its last quack.

At music report card time, I was delighted to see I got all As in clarinet playing! My mother was flabbergasted as to how I earned those grades. She actually went up to school to have my grades changed... to be made lower! She couldn't understand how my clarinet playing earned an A. I was quite unhappy to see my grades changed to the mediocre "C"s. Shortly afterwards, I quit the clarinet, and the hearing world rejoiced, as did worried ducks everywhere who were convinced my clarinet playing was one of their own being tortured. So ends my short chapter as a musician. A door closed, another thing I am not. Not a clarinet player. 

But then again, it was the drummer I wanted to be all along.


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Disclaimer: While my mom really did go up to school to see how I possibly could have earned A's for my clarinet playing, and while my grades were lowered, you should know that this was highly uncharacteristic of my mom, who has always been my greatest supporter. In Catholic Schools, you had to pay for these lessons and I think she felt we were not really getting our money's worth or no one was paying attention to my clarinet playing skills. My mom has been and continues to be a person who is consistently in my corner and helpful to me in every way. I could write thousands of slices for all the ways she has helped me.