FCFI
October 13, 2024
My wife had a class reunion last weekend. She got to ride on her class float along with several of her classmates during the Homecoming Parade and later we all got a tour of the high school we both attended. It was quite interesting walking the halls of the old high school. Everything was so much larger back then. A lot has changed, but then again, it all seemed the same. That night her classmates and their spouses gathered for dinner and a time of reminiscing. The stories began to flow and much laughter ensued. One story that had a commonality among many of her classmates was centered around a certain 5th grade teacher (now deceased) who had uncontrolled bouts of anger explosions at the expense of her students. While not funny at the time, many of them are able to laugh now.
Although I’m not in the same class as my wife, we went to the same high school and shared many of the same teachers. I had a story of my own that had to do with our band teacher.
I’ll begin at the beginning. The summer after I turned eleven, I started taking trombone lessons. I had just finished the 4th grade and was quite excited about this new adventure of learning to play a musical instrument. I chose the trombone because that’s what my older brother played. That meant my parents only had to buy one trombone (two mouth pieces).
I remember quite clearly getting up every day that summer at 4:50 a.m. to do the morning milking. I had to get up that early in order to make it to my 8:00 o’clock lesson on time. I had one of those wind up alarm clocks with the little bell and hammer mounted on the outside of the casing, just above one o’clock. It ticked and tocked all night long and when the alarm went off it rang loud enough to wake the dead. Two and half hours later, after milking, I would get on my bike and balance the trombone case across the handlebars and pedal the two miles to my lesson, then two miles back home again. I did that every summer for the next few years. During the school year I lugged that big old case with the trombone inside onto the bus and into the school. Unfortunately after all that, the lessons “didn’t take.” I don’t know why, but I have never been musically inclined. I guess God had other plans for me.
But I was faithful to practice and play for five whole years. During junior high I played in the band and the marching band. In spite of my musical shortcomings, I loved those years in the band – except for one occasion. As I was telling this story at the class reunion, one of my friends said: “That would make a good newspaper story.”
It was the last day of school just before Christmas break, 1972. Band was the last class of the day. Our “band room” was the stage in the Jr. High School. I played first chair, second trombone. After band class there was no school for the next 10 days. Our excitement level was off the charts. Imagine a crowded area full of Jr. High kids about to be set free. After playing our last number, we put our instruments away and lingered around on the stage impatiently waiting for the bell to ring so we could sprint to the bus with our instrument cases in hand. One common practical joke we sometimes played on each other, though strictly forbidden, was to nonchalantly sneak up on someone and nudge them just enough to send them sprawling off the stage onto the gym floor. To this day, I can’t tell you why, but I decided that this particular day was a good day to play that joke on one of my friends. Of course, in true Jr. High boy fashion, he made a big, loud commotion and stumbled half way out to center court before coming to a stop. Unfortunately for me, our teaching caught the whole episode out of the corner of her eye. She was enraged.
She sent me home that day in shame, with a Christmas vacation assignment to write an eight-page paper on Ludwig van Beethoven. Oh the heartbreak. Back then we didn’t have Internet, so I had to lug out the Collier Encyclopedia set my parents bought from a traveling salesman and labor over the history of this well-known musician. In retrospect, I suppose I deserved the punishment, but a little grace would have been nice. I found out at the reunion that I wasn’t the only one to suffer from the wrath of the band teacher. Other students had similar stories, some with different teachers, and some were much worse, but none compared to the boy who got his face bashed into his textbook by the teacher while sitting at his desk.
Times have sure changed.
(Kevin Cernek is Lead Pastor of Martintown Community Church in Martintown, Wisconsin).