A Toe-Tappin' Time

There are few words or phrases in the English language that can strike fear and terror into the hearts of parents with as much power and tenacity as: "Elementary Band Concert." Actually, that phrase comes in just behind "Fluteaphone Concert," but it's still very, very high on the list.

I was in band for many of my school days, and I can remember our first concerts. If I'm not mistaken, we began playing instruments back in third grade, which meant that some of the instruments were much larger than the kids were. God help the 8-year-old tuba player, for example.

Many of us kids had trouble holding our instruments steadily, and heaven knows we couldn't play them worth a darn. Yet our parents would come, all dressed up, and pretend that we were doing a great job.

In reality, I'm sure that many of the parents were praying that a beer truck would crash into the auditorium and they could all dance around in Budweiser instead of listening to another single note, but they did a good job of pretending to enjoy themselves.

Well, here we are, 30 some years later, and now we are the parents. What comes around, goes around, I guess.

Little Smoot has been playing the trumpet since the beginning of this school year, and her teacher always tells me she's doing a great job. I have no idea, since she never, ever, ever practices at home, no matter how often I bug her about it, and regardless of whatever threats I make.

We had our first elementary band concert tonight, and it went pretty well, all things considered. Thankfully they taught the kids just a few relatively brief songs, like the toe-tapping favorite "This Old Man."

I'm pretty sure they did a better job with their first concert than we did with ours. At least Little Smoot's group more or less knew when their songs began or finished. Some members of our band would often play a song so far off pace that we'd continue playing one song while others of us would be playing the next song in the program.

Since we have all of this technology at our fingertips, I thought I'd share a clip of the concert that I expertly took with my cell phone. It honestly did sound better in person. If nothing else, this will prove that I was actually there to view it: