The Dropouts

I was telling this story to someone today and had forgotten how funny it was ( to me anyway) so I thought I would share it. It is a story about me and college and being a musician. But, please, don't stop reading if you are not a musician, because I promise, even if you only took a few piano lessons as a child, or played in beginner band or were in choir for a few years, this will not be over your head.

After majoring in music for two years, I changed my major to elementary education. My friends Aimee and Tracie also changed their majors around the same time. Our new degree plans required a Humanities class. That's code for some form of appreciation of the arts. Now, my argument was that after numerous piano, music theory, music literature, recital, band, flute lessons, flute choir ( I could go on and on) classes, if I didn't appreciate the arts, well, I wasn't gonna. And no perky professor and her class could make me either! ( So, THERE!) Well, of course I appreciate the arts... but for argument's sake, I'm just sayin'. And, incidentally, the powers that be, disagreed with me on how much I appreciated the arts.

We enrolled in a class that was half theatre appreciation and half music appreciation. We obediently took the first half, enjoyed it and fared well. Then, the day came for us to plant our behinds in seats in the recital hall of the building we had practically lived in previously to listen to a new professor on staff in the music department who was obviously a former elementary teacher. You know why I know this? Because she was perky as all get-out. I mean REALLY perky. ANNOYINGLY perky! And on that first day, she walked up in front of the class ( full of non-musicians that looked bored to tears to even be there) and said (chirpily and loudly) " HELLO CLASS, MY NAME IS DR. _____ ________! THAT'S CALLED FORTE!" (now whispering) "Hello, class, I'm Dr. ______ _______ . That's called piano." The three stooges in the back of the classroom rolled our eyes and groaned.

Before the class was over, she had drawn a whole note on the board and said, "This is a whole note, it gets FOUR beats!" Oh yes she did. I was certain God was very unhappy with me, because I had just been cast into Hell.

As soon as class was out... we marched straight down the hall and to the office of our band director who also happened to be the music department chair at the time and closed his door. We proceeded to tell him in great detail about what we learned. After he finished laughing... and he laughed, HARD, he said he would see what he could do. He talked to the professor and informed us that she was not happy that we wanted to skip the classes and just take her final. She felt that we were being all self-righteous, but he managed to talk her into it anyway. ( Thank you, Dr. Johnson) But, she wanted to make it difficult for us. If we were such music geniuses, then we should he able to pass her tests WITHOUT the notes. I can't remember if she completely refused to give us the outline of what would be on the tests, or if she just refused to give us what would be on the listening portion of the test, but she did refuse to give us much to work with.

The day came for the final and we shuffled in there nervously. Dr. Happy Britches passed out the multiple choice answer portion of the test and was in the process of passing out the questions that we would all turn over on cue. Now, Dr. Perky Pants decided to make the ONE listening question count for a good portion of the grade, further complicating our plight. So, we quickly scanned the answer part to the listening portion to see four choices we did not recognize. She was playing hard ball. We confirmed that none of us had ever heard of any of the pieces, until....

My nerdiness and love of figure skating offered a glimmer of hope. One of the pieces was "Bolero". I did not recognize this piece because of my music background, but because of my love of figure skating and the famous performance by Torville and Dean in the 1984 Winter Olympics. I quickly explained that I DID know one piece, so we had a one in four chance that we would get it, or at the very least, if it WASN'T Bolero, we would only have three other choices and narrow the odds of guessing incorrectly.

Well, the moment came. She started the piece and we all craned our necks to hear. And ever so softly, I heard, DUM da da da DUM da da da DUM da da da da da da da da da..... I could see Tracie and Aimee cut their eyes sideways at me. I smiled from ear to ear and we all three furiously bubbled in "C". We all made an A in that class. And proved that God either loves unholy backsliding quitters OR just loves them more than He loves perky elementary school music teachers.

** I would like to add a very ironic and hilariously funny afternote- Tracie is now an elementary music teacher. I have faith that she isn't annoyingly perky, though. At least I HOPE she isn't!