Concert-y Childhood Memories inspired by Mr. Rochester

     My dad is a musician and he used to be in a large concert band.  As a musician's child you can always expect that the holidays will bring a lot of work and possible recruitment as a cute prop for many a holiday celebration. I was totally about the participation until the age of all knowing.....13.  The theme de jour was "Toyland" and at 13, age of infinite wisdom,  I was positively sure that I was above it all.  Only one thing could supercede my adolescent disdain.  My dad...and my role as daddy's girl superceded my need to be grownup.

   My dad brought me a list of the toy instrument parts (music)  for my perusal.  I could choose my part.  (Dads know everything don't they.)  There were toy drums, toy horns, toy flutes, a Nightinggale, cymbals, triangles, and a Cuckoo.  Using my all-knowing, I reasoned it out.  I was not going to bang on a snare, spit in a horn, learn a flute-y piece, a Nightinggale sounded supiciously like a lead instrument...likely requiring the spotlight, cymbals were loud......but here, here was the Cuckoo.  2 notes only.  Sounded easy.  Sounded like two notes.  Sounded like something that fades into the crowd.  Sounded like my kind of choice. 

    So I practiced and praticed. I did not want to do this, but I wanted to embarass my father even less.  It was even better than I envisioned.   The cuckoo was a metal instrument with one hole...thus 2 notes.  I only had to know where to bring it in.  The worst part would be dressing like a toy and my mother trying to live out the Shirley Temple fantasy thru my hair.....(OUCH!  -- let no one tell you rag curls are soft to sleep on)

   Dress rehearsal arrived.  Excitement was in the air.  Not because of the performance but because one of the drummers had sticks in his nose and the trumpet kid popped his hand and he now had them lodged in his nostrils.  It stemmed the bleeding anyway.  So being mature and self assured...much more than the "adolescents" that surrounded me.  I volunteered my services to be the drummer girl.  I would show my dad that yes, this was degrading to me as a "budding adult" but something must be done, the show must go on.  (Not only did my hair reflect Shirley Temple....but probably the tightness of the curls was causing Shirley like delusions.) 

     It was only then that I was informed the name of the piece we were to perform....."Flight of the Cuckoo".  I think even my curls wilted in that moment.

   But I did my "Cuckoo" duty for my father.  Locked my knees but managed not to pass out until curtain....I wonder if I passed out cute Shirley temple style?  But it was the last time my father asked me to join a toyland band, so long farewell to an Austrian audience, be a Siamese child of the King, be an angel in the manger, or have a hard knock life.

   I am glad to have had the opportunity to close that chapter of my life with a little cuckoo.