my first extraction

6/21/99

I bought a plant and headed down to Adrian yesterday for Father’s Day. Turned out my parents weren’t going to be back in town until Monday. Humph. Called Matt from there, told him I was putting his name on the note I left with the plant, and then I went across the street to visit the Callahans.

The Callahans have lived across the street from my parents since I was, like, two. They like to tell the stories about how shy I was when I was a little kid. Mr. Callahan says, “Heyyy, Betsy! Remember when you used to ride your tricycle up and down the street—“ and Mrs. Callahan will interrupt him to say, “You were So Cute! You wouldn’t talk to Anybody!”

Mr. Callahan was the best Santa Claus in the whole world. At Christmastime every church and nursery school in town would call to hire him, and every year he stopped by our house one night on his way. My brother was scared out of his mind; we have a million pictures of Matt sitting on Santa’s lap, tearstained and miserable. One fateful year I looked at Santa and thought, “Santa looks a lot like Mr. Callahan....” Of course, I thought Mr. Callahan was playing an awfully dirty trick, pretending to be Santa.

So I chatted with the Callahans for a while. They sit in their family room all the time, and everyone who’s ever lived in our neighborhood comes to visit them. They love to gossip, so I heard all about Jeffy’s crappy job and Susie’s crappy new house; Annie’s benign lumps and my own parents’ test-driven trucks. Wonder what they tell other people about me after I leave...?

Since I missed my dad on the Father’s Day stuff, I called to wish John’s father a happy Father’s Day. Talked to his parents and brother a little bit. I told his mother, Sharron, about my tattoo, and she kindly informed me that my dime-sized crescent moon will one day be the size of a quarter. Then a half-dollar. Umm...great.

Had my first in-home private lesson today. We didn’t get much playing done—first we talked about her summer activities, then we exchanged e-mails etc., and when she started to play she sounded horrible. Fuzzy, no pitch center at all, and it was more than just having to play the “summer horn.” I took her euphonium away and gave her mine, which she loved. Naturally! My horn is expensive and clean, of course it’s nicer than the shitty thing they gave her at school.

While she noodled around on my Willson, I took her scratchy-scummy bellfront horn apart and looked for slimy places. I figured we could do a euph-bathing lesson if it was really bad, but the only part of the horn that was really dirty was the mouthpiece. I got a paper towel and some sanitizer and attacked the braces goo/lipstick crust, willing myself not to gag. I scraped as much as I could out of the cup part of the mouthpiece, and my student got involved for the next part.

I held the mouthpiece up to the light and looked through the tube, and there was a big chunk of something in there. Ugh. I handed it back to her with a paper towel and told her to blow through it as hard as she could, to try and dislodge it. No luck. Finally I got a Q-Tip and had her poke it in there, and out fell a big plastic clip, like a part of a spring-operated pen, or something. No wonder she couldn’t focus the pitch. I’ve heard all kinds of stories about small or not-so-small objects that teachers have found in horns, but this is my first time. Wow.

Funny how much her sound had improved when she played again! And that mouthpiece is the cleanest it’s been since she got her hands on it. I’m such a good teacher.