Curiosity killed the cat and Kayak Woman took a Facebook quiz. As much as I stick my nose high up in the air about those Facebook quizzes, really, I am no better than anybody else slogging along on the those tubes and I do occasionally succumb to the siren call of a facebook quiz. I just don’t always put the results on my news feed or whatever it is. This morning? “What instrument are you?” popped up. Well. I spent the better part of my youth playing and eventually achieving a relatively high level of expertise on a certain musical instrument. So. What instrument am I?

Yiiiy!!! The clarinet!?!? NOT!!! REPEAT! NOT!!! Oh, I don’t have anything against the clarinet. It’s just that it is not MY instrument! MY instrument is the flute!!! I can remember being a very little kid and seeing pictures of flutes and thinking, “I WANT THAT!” I was HOT to learn where to put my little fingers on those complicated-looking keys. Two beloved older cousins played the flute too, when they were in high school. I admired them and envied them in general but the reason I picked the flute went farther than that. It was MY instrument. Gimme one o’ those flutes! When I finally got my hands on one of those crappy old instruments that they give 5th-grade band students, I was the first kid to get a sound and I went through the whole lesson book in about two weeks. I played piano too so I already knew how to read music (actually, until I got hooked up with piano lessons, I taught myself…). Anyway, I spent many years practicing the flute (and the piano) for *hours* every day and my original degree is in music. With a focus on flute, to be exact. Alas… I was very good at playing the flute but I don’t really have a performer’s personality. And teaching? You guys are lucky I’m not a teacher! It’s okay, I love computer work toooo. And that’s what I doooo.

But the clarinet!!! The thing that was really weird about this quiz result is that, back when I was a young college student and was still in the music education track, I took classes in how to play all of the other orchestral instruments. So I could teach them to young children. (If I didn’t kill the kids.) I picked most of those instruments up VERY quickly. Brasses? Check. Strings? Wow. Percussion? Yes. Clarinet? Hmm… I thought that I was so dern cool that I could just pick up a clarinet and be able to play it well right away, like the other instruments. NOT!!! I could NOT get a sound out of that thing. I tried and tried and tried for several weeks. No luck. The reed confounded me. Finally!!! A squeak and then something resembling a clarinet tone. The teacher and I both breathed a sigh of relief. I mean, the other instrument being studied in that class was the FLUTE. And I was known as a person who was good at the blasted FLUTE.

Anyway. The questions on these quizzes are always pretty weird and sometimes I can’t even answer them. Probably, if I had picked “things that make me look cute” for “favorite clothing” I’d have gotten the coveted “I am a FLUTE” answer. Because “cute” is part of the stereotype for flute players. At least high school band flute players. “Blonde” is probably part of that stereotype too. “Girl” is definitely in there… You should’ve seen what I wore to walk over to the Plum Market after work today. Cute? Not.

When I finally got around to reading the description of a clarinet player, I knew I’d been had. Only a high-school kid could’ve written this thing. Sigh. There are “sucky” guy (and gal) clarinet players. Some trumpet players are obnoxious and some are not. I dunno. I didn’t see what the young quiz-writer had to say about trombone players but I’ve lived with a couple of them and they can be dern raunchy. And some flute players do fit the cute, blonde (er, and arrogant) stereotype, at least when they are young. That’s all I’m sayin’. G’night!

This entry was posted on Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 7:21 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.