Pride

This one is a little silly, but I'm feeling it anyway.

During the summer between grades four and five I took a summer band program given by the Tewksbury school system.  I started to learn to play the saxophone.  My sister played the clarinet and I thought that was cool, but it was also a little too girly of an instrument to follow in her footsteps.  I was told that girls play the clarinet and boys play the saxophone.  I took the saxophone.

By the time I was 15 I was also learning the guitar.  I took to the guitar much faster (I could already read music, so I had a huge head start on the normal beginner) and I seemed to enjoy it more, but I was never as good at the guitar as I was at the saxophone.  When it came time to try to get into music school I auditioned as a sax player.

Now 20 some odd years after those college auditions I am a guitar player more or less exclusively.  I don't play a lot, but I still break it out from time to time.  The saxophone... not so much.  Partly because my much beloved horn is full of leaks and holes and sounds like crap, but also because it is much more demanding from a physical stand point than the guitar.  If you take a long time off and then pick up the guitar your finger tips will be in some real pain as you wait for the calluses to redevelop.  Saxophone though relies more on muscle control and after 5-10 minutes of playing my jaw is just done and I can't do it anymore.  5-10 minutes a day for a couple of weeks would bring me back to respectability, but I have rarely been that driven.

That might change soon though.  My step daughter is now in fifth grade and she is having her first in-school saxophone lesson today.  She is using her dad's old horn.  He was a sax player in school too.  This weekend we'll probably go to a music store for whatever book she is going to need, and maybe a music stand, and maybe a little reed case or something.  She can already read music from all of those piano lessons so she is going to be light years ahead of the other fifth graders.

She narrowed down the decision on which instrument to play to sax and trumpet.  She chose sax because she already had one.  If she chose trumpet I would be just as pleased.  I played the trumpet a little in high school too.  Either way, she's taking her first step toward being a band geek.  Bless her sweet little heart.  More importantly, she's taking her first step toward high school jazz band, which is where all the cool band geeks end up.  Sax players get lots of solo time in jazz band. 

Break a leg, you kool kittie kat.