I started playing violin when I was five years old. There was a tradition in my town where all the students would come together and perform a concert. The most advanced student would perform a solo, then the next advanced would join them and they’d play a duet, and so on until everyone was on stage. To top it all, every song had to memorized, making it a rather difficult competition (if you were up first, you had a lot of songs to remember). When I was about seven or eight, I decided I wanted to be number one. So I practiced and practiced. And I didn’t get it, but I was like number two or three…I was really high up. To say the least, I was pretty excited.
There I was the night of the concert, waiting for the soloist to finish to join her on stage to play our duet. I waited, my teacher introduced me, and I made my way to the steps to the stage. And I promptly tripped and fell. My violin shot out of my arms and shattered. In front of the whole friggin town.
My teacher ran up to me to make sure I was okay, and I very clearly remember her telling me I could sit the concert out. I just stared at her on the verge of bursting into tears and said “No, but I don’t have a violin.” She handed me her violin and I played the concert.
Flash forward thirteen or so years to my senior of high school. In that time I had started playing the cello, guitar, and dabbled in piano. My teacher back then was (and I think still is) the orchestra conductor for the elementary, middle, and high school…basically I studied with her for thirteen years. It was the night of our last orchestra concert before I was graduating and going to college. Our orchestra was making our way up on to the stage and she was sitting back stage collecting herself (she gave a rather emotional speech when she introduced us…she was losing a lot of students who she knew since a really young age). I was last in line, carrying my cello. Just as I was walking up the stairs, I tripped just like so many years ago. This time, however, she caught me. She then chuckled and said “careful, you wouldn’t want to trip.”
It’s just funny that my whole music career with her basically started and ended with a trip.
We actually lost power a couple days ago and it took them six hours to come out to our neighborhood to realize a transformer blew up. So they had to send more crews out. I’m not kidding, the street was lined with utility trucks. Finally, at 10pm they seemed to be done, and then we heard roughly four mini explosions and it turned out they blew out all of the transistors/transformers/whatever they’re called on our street. So they continued to work through the night…at one point they left (we think to get supplies or something) but they left their trucks on, rumbling at 2 a.m. I have no idea when they finished, but it wasn’t a particularly fun evening, especially since the only two candles we had in the house were “Hot Apple Pie” and “Scents of Beach,” which are two smells that should not mix. It’s like a warm cinnamon stick dipped in sun screen
When you walk in, they give you a button that reads “Senator-For-A-Day” and a tablet and send you to an “orientation,” which I thought was a little strange, but rather necessary. In your “orientation,” they give you a little background on the Senate (i.e. how it was formed) and they give you a tutorial on how to use your tablet within the exhibits. They always refer to you as “Senator,” which is kind of funny, and tell you to create a profile on your tablet. So you choose your political party and state you want to represent (I was Senator Spencer from Massachusetts, and thusly referred to myself as such for the rest of the day). As you go through the exhibits, you can use the tablet to vote in debates and act like a senator. While I learned a lot of this stuff in high school, I still found it enlightening and great for kids.