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I Will Never Be Dizzy Gillespie

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Like most mothers, mine had a somewhat inflexible opinion of how children should be raised. At key points in a child's life, new experiences and skills should be introduced in order for them to reach their maximum potential. Strict adherence to her plan for childrearing would virtually guarantee that her children would surpass their peers at all levels and eventually come to be regarded by history as humanity's greatest treasures. Like most plans that lead to a lofted place in history and the flawless shaping of a young mind, hers had a few minor kinks.

My mother would often announce to my brother and me that we would be starting a new hobby or learning a skill that she deemed vital for success. Some of these were quite useful, and I'm forever grateful for the day when I learned why you aren't supposed to stick forks in the light socket. Others were less helpful, like the week we learned to walk down the stairs with books balanced on our heads; a skill most young boys don't tend to work into their daily lives.

As a child, my mother had played the flute and came to regard learning a musical instrument as one of the most fulfilling passions to which a person could devote their life. She spoke highly of the new perspectives that her musical education had opened to her, and the great satisfaction she received each time she played on her flute. This was a surprising assertion considering that her flute had been sitting in the bottom of various closets gathering dust for the past thirty years.

It came as no surprise then, that just before I began the fifth grade my mother announced that I was to take up a musical instrument. She wasn't insisting that I simply learn to play—a mistake all too common amongst other parents—I was to become a musician. It would be a wonderful skill to have, she told me. At parties I would notice an oboe or a violin in the corner of the room and graciously ask my host, "Oh you don't mind, do you?" As I casually picked up and tuned the instrument, the crowd of socialites would stop their conversations and put down their drinks to admire my tear-jerking impromptu performance of my own original work. Women would swoon, and mothers all over the room would think to themselves, "If only my child had been raised that well." Mother had grand plans.

At eleven years of age, I didn't quite share my mother's psychotic enthusiasm. Why couldn't I learn to be a ninja, or an acrobat, or a pirate? Something useful. It became quickly apparent, however, that this would not be like the time when I had successfully refused to eat meat loaf. "If you don't want to play an instrument," she suggested, "we could always sign you up for dance lessons." Mother always had an ace up her sleeve.

Once I resigned myself to accepting the fact that I would be playing an instrument, even if it meant my mother forcing it to my lips and using my screams for air, I figured that I would at least select the implement of my torture. My brother played the clarinet, but that had far too many little holes and funny looking silver levers for me; a recorder if Rube Goldberg ever had gotten his hands on one. I needed something simple, something that would require the least possible amount of input from me, the reluctant musician.

The trumpet! Just three stupid little keys, how hard could that be? I remembered watching people play the trumpet on TV, many of them doing so with just one hand. If I used both of mine, I reasoned, then I could probably master this brass demon in a couple of days. Once I soared to unprecedented heights as one of the world's premier trumpet players at the tender age of eleven, I could put away this silly horn and get back to more pressing matters like playing Nintendo and throwing rocks at the neighbor's trash cans. If I had it all and gave it up, music fans the world over would speak of the prodigy who burst onto the scene and changed the world of trumpeters forever, only to vanish as quickly as he had appeared. I would be the Bobby Fischer of the trumpet, a tortured genius who would simply never play again.

I marched proudly into the living room, puffed up my chest, and announced to my mother that her youngest son would from this moment forward, forever be a trumpet player. Mom was ecstatic that I had finally come around to seeing the importance of being a musician, and my father at least seemed happy that I had selected something cheaper than a piano or an upright bass.

We drove to the music store later that afternoon to pick out the instrument that was to be my springboard to the top of the musical scene. The salesman was very nice, and used words like "cool" and "hip" which briefly made it seem like this wouldn't be quite as bad as I had imagined. His instrument, he explained, was the electric guitar, and had I ever thought about playing that instead? My mother—who knew just how unpleasant her life would become living under the same roof with an eleven-year-old boy trying his hand at an amplified headache inducer—quickly shot the salesman a dirty look and led the way to the brass section.

The friendly salesman motioned to a wall of trumpets, all virtually identical to me aside from the little white price tags dangling from their valves. Cost was of little concern to me, as I was to become a musician at my mother's insistence, meaning that she would need to pick up the tab. I chose an expensive one for spite. One day, I thought, she would really need to learn to think these things through a little more thoroughly.

Holding the heavy brass instrument in my hand, I imagined that this must have been how Rembrandt felt when given his first brush, Mozart his first harpsichord, or Gallagher his first sledgehammer. The salesman tried to give me a brief lesson on how to properly hold and play the trumpet, explaining how to force the air through tight, buzzing lips. Being a courteous young man, I allowed him to speak and feigned interest until he had finished, nodding my head so he knew I understood. I didn't really need to pay attention, however, as I was a gifted musician and this would all come naturally to me. Besides, he was a guitar player; what could he possibly know about the trumpet? No, music is something that just happens for those of us with the gift, it's only those that God snubbed at the gift stage of their creation who actually need to practice.

I rode home with my new brass companion sitting on my lap, eager to begin my music career so that I could give it up that much faster. I had yet to produce a sound, as my mother forbade playing in the car. I had been a musician for all of five minutes and she was already stifling my creativity. Tyrant.

As soon as we arrived home, I assembled my family so that they could all witness the birth of my creative genius. I imagined that this would be one of those great moments in history that my family was privileged to be a part of and would later recount in their old age to crowds of gathered children sitting around them in a park. I had no sheet music, as real musicians just play from the soul, and I wouldn't have known how to read it anyway. Raising the trumpet to my lips I took a deep breath and blew as hard as I could while moving the three keys as fast as my tiny fingers would allow. What followed was only the hissing sound of my breath escaping from the instrument, which coincided nicely with the rapid deflating of my ego. Not only had I failed to produce brilliantly life-changing music, but I had failed to produce a noise that was even vaguely trumpety.

My family was nice enough to sit patiently on the living room sofa as I inspected my obviously flawed instrument. I cursed the salesman for having the nerve to take advantage of my poor, unsuspecting mother by selling her this lemon. How did my keen eyes and highly developed sense of social perception fail to detect this charlatan and his tainted wares? Oh, he was a crafty one, that much was certain.

My younger sister Sarah bounced off the couch and hurried across the room to have a look at what might to be the problem. At just five years old, she was already quite empathetic and eager to help. Being the good older brother that I am, I humored her interest by letting her give the trumpet a thorough once over. If a master musician like myself couldn't find the problem though, there wasn't much hope that she would be able to find it either. Standing up straight, Sarah took a deep breath and blew into the horn. Instantly, the room was alive with the painful screech of a five-year-old blasting randomly on a trumpet as loud as she possibly could. Applause rang out as my mother and father praised the true musical prodigy in the family, though they seemed blissfully unaware of the fact that she wasn't really playing anything good.

Maybe I hadn't found my groove just yet. I was sure a lesson or two would put me on the right track and I'd just be playing shows a little later than I had originally planned.

In an attempt to unleash the musical genius that lurked just beneath the surface of my complete lack of ability, my mother had insisted that I play in the school band with all of the other kids who hadn't been able to weasel their way out of it either. The fun thing about being an already socially awkward eleven-year-old boy is that once you've joined the school band, you get to carry your instrument with you like an albatross each Tuesday and Thursday. This wasn't really much of a problem for the flute players, since they could easily stuff their stigmas in their backpacks and no one would be the wiser. My trumpet, on the other hand, was just large enough that it was both awkward to carry and took up enough space on a school bus seat so that I had no hope of sitting next to another person on the long rides to and from school. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that the only place to find solitary seats was in the front of the bus right behind the driver and directly across the aisle from the kids in the math club. It occurred to me that the band geeks weren't inherently socially inept; they were merely victims of circumstance. Except for that kid with the tuba, though; there's no way he didn't see that one coming.

Twice each week, while the other kids would go to gym class to get faster and stronger in order to more efficiently pick on the rest of us who's parents failed to grasp the social caste system of elementary school, we would grab our French horns, oboes, and of course, trumpets, and spend an hour with the music teacher. In order to teach elementary school band, one must possess either a saintly level of patience or an unhealthy disconnection from reality and adult life. Since we attended a public school, we had the latter. Mrs. Paulsen was a short and plump old woman; the kind of person who would squeal in celebration upon witnessing her baby's first bowel movement. Her hair was wildly unkempt and looked as though it could have housed any number of species of small birds. Whenever we entered the room, our heads hung low and our gaze locked firmly on the ground, Mrs. Paulsen would greet us in a manic, singsong voice that had an annoying way of forcing us to smile.

Mrs. Paulsen was determined to make little musicians out of each and every one of us, and the best way to do that, she would tell us, was to master the fundamentals of our instruments. It was really quite simple, "Josh, you play the trumpet. It is made of brass and you blow into this end. Erin, you play the drums. They are made of wood and leather and you pound on them with those sticks." Now that we had mastered the fundamentals of name, construction material, and whether or not you blew into it or hit it with something, we were ready to start making real music.

A good warm-up is critical to playing your best, a fact of which Mrs. Paulsen was well aware and made us repeat in unison before each class. We would unpack our instruments and then randomly blow into them or hit them with sticks as we had been shown, setting the mood for the rest of the hour. After we were sufficiently warm and at peak performance, Mrs. Paulsen would conduct us in a spirited rendition of Hot Cross Buns, which usually sounded remarkably similar to the warm-up session. Afterward, Mrs. Paulsen would either excitedly proclaim that we were making incredible progress, or that we would never be ready for our recital if we kept playing like that, though we could hear no discernable difference. Our level of progress was usually less a function of actual improvement and more of a reflection of whether or not Mrs. Paulsen was in the manic or depressive state of what I can only assume was an advanced bipolar disorder. I sometimes like to think back and imagine what my musical career would have been like if only Mrs. Paulsen had been prescribed lithium.

As the years wore on it became glaringly obvious that I would never become the charming sophisticate with a gift for music as my mother had intended. Her two sons incapable of making the family name synonymous with musical brilliance, my mother turned her focus to poor little Sarah, her last remaining hope. With her attention momentarily diverted, I managed to escape signing up for band classes the next year without my mother noticing; mumbling something about budget cuts when she asked me what happened to the music program.

While I never went on to fame and fortune as a musician, I have proudly continued our family tradition of storing an unused instrument at the bottom of my closet for the past ten years and counting. Mother would be so proud.

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