Just like the return of the seven-year-locusts, I couldn't resist the siren's call to fulfill my fantasy of becoming an integral part of a band. Seven years ago, I was asked to be part of our school's rocking-cool band as a back-up singer and I leaped at the chance. I knew the words. I had the moves. But all the practice in the world couldn't provide me with the one thing I needed most: singing ability...and talent. Exasperated and somewhat dumbfounded in the face of such an extreme lack of musicality, my administrator didn't have it in him to break my heart so he just cut the sound feed to my microphone. I can't sing but I'm not stupid. Thus ended my auspicious aspirations.
Or so I thought. Fate finds it way in the least likely of places. Last week, as I was wrestling 4th graders onto their buses, I heard my administrator seeking help with his end-of-year show. Still stinging from that painful slap-in-the-face of seven years ago, I didn't even pause long enough to consider his question; averting my face and flinging out a French hand for my curt and dismissive, "No!" But dreams die hard and when another band member came to seek me out, I relented. What could I do? The needed me.
Forget about fifteen minutes of fame. This was more like five. Five of the longest, most excruciatingly humiliating moments of my life. Planting me reluctantly behind a kettle drum, my fellow band members addressed my concerns with curt reassurance. "Have you ever played an instrument," I was asked by way of audition. Ashamed, I admitted to a brief stint with the clarinet where I made it as far as "Ma-ry had a lit-tle...squeak." They nodded, glancing with barely concealed concern at one another but desperation drove them forward. "It's just a five-beat count, for goodness sake," said my administrator, thrusting a pair of sticks with marshmallows on the ends at me. My confidence soared. I've had plenty of experience holding s'more sticks AND I could count to five. Maybe I could do this.
No, I couldn't. Turns out that I can't count to five. Even when I tried (and failed) to synchronize it with the tapping of one foot. Even when someone clapped it out for me. Even when I closed my eyes and squinched up my face. Only when the music wasn't playing was I able to produce a five-beat rhythm on that drum and apparently that wasn't a scenario that the band was willing to consider. Again, I slunk off the stage and into utter and abject obscurity. Underground...like the locusts...biding my time until an opportunity arrives for me to emerge again.
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