A random story

Yesterday when we were talking about renting a movie, I was telling Katie about why I no longer like one of the two places in Morris at which one can rent movies (well, not counting the library, where we actually got ours; as Katie said, we're poor college kids).

Last week, when Seth, Sarah, Matthew and I decided we wanted to see Zoolander again, I was the one who actually ran in to get it. I gave the lady my money and card and when she scanned the card she let out this horrible laugh and said I had a late fee amounting to twenty dollars and some cents. I couldn't believe it. I don't know if I've ever brought a movie back late--it's one of the few things I'm anal-retentive about, actually--and there's no way anything extreme enough to cause a $20 fee would escape my attention. I asked her what movie it had been and when she told me it suddenly made perfect sense. I left in angry silence, not having the money to give her even if I'd wanted to, and there wasn't anything else to be done. At the car, I explained to Seth that he'd have to get the movie since I couldn't. As he was doing that I told Matthew what had happened. (It wasn't really the twenty dollars that bothered me, it was the lack of respect with which I'd been treated by someone who thinks she's my friend ... and this wasn't the first instance. It's hard for me to even think charitably about her any more.)

At first Matthew said that since it was twenty dollars or more I was entitled to a jury trial, the Constitution said so. ("Well, that probably made more sense when the Constitution was written," I said, "as twenty dollars was worth a bit more then." "Doesn't matter, that's still what it says!" he replied. I smiled.) But when I told him Jenn had rented that movie with my card and without my consent he got more excited. "That's identity theft! That's a felony!" I had to laugh at that. Seth returned with the movie, and we went home to watch it. By the time we got there I felt better, having been regaled with tales of what could happen to Jenn for this.

Matthew does things like this sometimes that cheer me up. I don't think that's his intended purpose--it's just how his brain works and he likes to amuse himself--but when it happens to amuse me too, especially when I'm in a bad mood, it reminds me of how much I like him.

"Hey, honey, let's go bassooning this weekend!"

The wonderful thing about LJ comments is that you can go off on these tangents, as tjej and I proved in an entry I wrote a couple days ago. Because of that, I now find myself with the desire to talk about my adventures as a bassoonist.

The previous bassoon player was a year older than me, so the year I was a senior in high school, the band was bassoonless. I think the band director asked me because he thought I was a sucker who'd do it. He was right, of course.

I think it had something to do with the fact that my best friend was out to learn all of the instruments she could, as soon as she could. Upon hearing that Allen Vizzutti was coming to our school, she wanted to play in the jazz band with him, but she was a baritone payer and that's not a very jazzy instrument. So the director gave her an old trombone and she practiced it for most of her waking hours one weekend and has been playing trombone in jazz bands ever since. I wanted to be like that, only I was being offered a bassoon, which I thought made even a trombone look cool. Still, it was either that or keep playing bass clarinet.

One day after school I asked the director which case the bassoon was in. He pointed it out. I found it deceptively small. I opened it up and immediately noticed that one of the parts had two holes. Well, lengths of tube always have two holes, but I mean it had two in the same end, and none in the other. What's with that?! Bassoons only have four parts, basically--well, five if you count the bocal, and six if you count the reed--but I still wasn't very quick about putting them together. I'd show up for band early so I had time to assemble my instrument (though of course I'd eventually be about to do it in about two seconds).

Next I had to learn how to hold the thing, which was even harder. It just didn't make any sense to put my fingers where they were supposed to go, and the thing felt lop-sided. But at least the setup put the reed close enough to my mouth that I could try blowing into it. I did, but that didn't last long because it's hard to maintain the proper embouchure when you're laughing hysterically at the noise that has just emanated from the bassoon.

"Then what?" I asked the director.

"Then ... we moved onto oboe," he said. Oh terrific. Nice to know his college classes were so helpful. Since then, I was on my own. He gave me a book and a fingering chart and said, "Go home and .... learn a concert B-flat scale or something."

First I had to figure out what key bassoons are in, and discovered that a concert B-flat is a B-flat for me too. Sweet. Now, how to play a B-flat ... and then a C ... and the next day I played a B-flat scale for him, slowly, and frequently having to stop because I had to look at my fingers and you can't see them when you're playing a bassoon. A bit later, I heard him mention to someone else that I'd learned more my first day than he knew at all (which, of course, only sounds good to people who don't know how little he knew).

Though the Vizzutti concert was only a few weeks later, I learned enough to play one song on bassoon. Twice that year I played a duet with my friend the baritone player. I once was part of a trio consisting of an oboe player (who didn't want to play a solo), me (who'd taken pity on her), and the E-flat clarinet player (the addition of whom, our director told us, was the only thing we could do to make ourselves sound sillier), who introduced us as The Three Squeaks--Low Squeak (me, of course), Middle Squeak (the oboe), and High Squeak (himself). I got called "buffoon," or "the buffoon player," mostly by the director. Our band took a trip to St. Louis that spring; I had to lug the bassoon around--and my clarinet, for marching band, and bass and amp, for jazz band. The bassoon and I had good times that year.

Incidentally, the subject line is something I half-remembered from Garrison Keillor's Young Lutheran's Guide to the Orchestra, which I find hilarious, but I admit that it may have less appeal to people who aren't familiar with orchestras (or Lutherans). Here's the rest of what he says about bassoons:

Should a Lutheran play the bassoon? Not if you want to be taken seriously, I don't think so. The name kind of says it all: bassoon. It's an instrument that isn't playing with a full deck of marbles. Maybe it's something you'd do for a hobby ("Hey honey, let's go bassooning this weekend!"), but not as your life's work. Some bassoonists filling out applications for home loans just say "orthodontist."