I have another one for you. My last post made me think of this. We're talking same Mrs. Brown, same first grade classroom, same little liar (me) the whole scene. There was a girl named Crystal in my class. Two actually, I think, but this story involves the blond one.
It was show and tell day, which I think only came once a month or maybe two since somehow each student had to get their day in by the end of the school year. Again my years of aging and child like memory distort my sense of time. It seemed that show and tell occurred very rarely.
We all loved show and tell, because again all eyes would be on you the "more special than everyone else student" of the day. I think everyone felt this way...I did...yes, I'm sure everyone felt this way!
Anyway, this particular show and tell day belonged to Crystal. She had the big, cloth, blue bag hiding whatever it was she brought from home. To start things off, she gave hints about what was inside and we all raised our hands and took turns guessing. Finally the big reveal came Crystal reached into her bag and pulled out...a violin. Everyone ooowed and ahhed, but not me. I wasn't easily impressed.
She played us a song or two on her violin, which impressed me even less. How easy did that look?! When she finished, everyone clapped and she took a little bow. Brother, I thought.
Mrs. Brown opened it up for Q & A time. "How much did that cost?" someone wanted to know. Crystal didn't know. Mrs. Brown steered the conversation in another direction. "How long have you been taking lessons?" another one of my inquisitive classmates asked. I could do better than this.
I raised my hand. "Can I play? I know how to play the violin. Can I play a song on it?" I asked most confidently. "That's up to Melinda"-hey I just remembered her name wasn't Crystal! It was Melinda! Anyway, Melinda said that I could.
I walked up to the front of the class, gosh this was exciting. I took the violin and the bow from her, placing them in what I thought were the appropriate positions, and began to play. No one in the room could have been more surprised than I was at the screeching that followed. It had looked sooooo easy. Why was it screeching for me? I pulled the bow back and forth over the strings, mimicking just what Melinda had done, but the harder and faster I played, the worse it sounded. I tried not to panic and I definitely wasn't going to stop playing. I needed to keep playing for a couple of reasons. One, if I stopped now, Mrs. Brown and everyone else would know that I didn't really know how to play the violin. So the "fake it till you make it" tactic crossed my mind. Also, I needed to buy myself some time to figure out what I was going to say once I did stop playing.
Now, I did take piano lessons so I knew a little something about music. One was the normal duration of a song. I played as long as I thought a normal song should last. When I stopped playing Mrs. Brown said something like "That was interesting" and "What was the name of that song?" The second thing I'd learned in my year of piano lessons was that the titles of the songs usually sounded like what they were, (i.e chopsticks) so I replied confidently with, "Screeching Cars." And with that I handed the violin and bow back to Melinda who looked a little bit bewildered. And I went back to take my seat thinking I had pulled it off marvelously!
Some punk from the class made a comment like, "That's not how it's supposed to sound!" to which Mrs. Brown (bless her heart) said, "There are many sounds a violin can make. That was one of them." Yeah! I thought. By this point I had convinced myself that I really did know how to play the violin and was ready to add it to my resume. I didn't wake up knowing that about myself that morning, but hey, you learn something new everyday!
