By Rachelle Allen
My grandmother died when I was five, leaving my mother an inheritance substantial enough for the purchase of a full-length mink coat for herself with enough left over for a Wurlitzer spinet piano for me (on substantial markdown because it had only 86 keys instead of 88).
(A.) Glory Days
I began lessons with Mrs. Brenner, a peppy, smiling woman so kind and nice that, during Recess at school, whenever I played House, I became her. I was always Beverly: beautiful and nice to everyone.
Unlike other children in our teeny town in 1961, and long before it became as common as it is today, I lived in a two-career family. Both my parents worked not only outside of our rural home, but 25 miles away in what everyone I knew referred to as "The City." And, because all our relatives lived hours away, it was arranged that I would go to a babysitter's before and after school each day.
My new caregiver was a scowly-faced woman with an unpredictable love of yelling. In her dark and foreboding living room, there was a huge, old, upright piano with keys like a set of decaying dentures. None of her teenagers ever touched it, so I had carte blanche to practice on it every single day.
In no time, I discovered that none of her other wards --a sweet brother and sister whose mom had died, a whiny girl from next door with stringy hair, and even the babysitter's bossy six-year-old daughter-- was allowed to disturb me when I was at the piano. I noticed, too, that as long as I was playing, my babysitter seemed a lot happier, and on many days, she even hummed along from the kitchen. She never said so, but I always wondered if the piano had been hers at my age because they both seemed so old. (To my six-year-old mind, that calculated to close to 30.)
The school bus dropped me off there at 3:30 p.m. every day, and my father arrived to retrieve me at 5:15. Needless to say, with nearly two hours of practice five days each week, I excelled at piano quickly and lived for my Saturday piano lesson time when I could show Beverly Brenner all my newfound skills and she could continue to shower me with encouragement.
Lesson: Even a skill you acquire under duress is still one you get to keep forever and use to your advantage.
(B.) Dark Days
The summer before I started third grade, though, Mrs. Brenner's husband found a much better job in Philadelphia and took her away from me. I was bereft. Also that year, my mother announced that I would be going to a different babysitter's before and after school. (In our house, elaborate communication was a lost art. Parents gave directions, and offspring followed them. It was a simple, efficient operation.) The new babysitter turned out to be even scowlier-faced than the first, yelled substantially more, and, worst of all, had no piano. Not that it mattered, really, since I no longer had a piano teacher.
Thankfully, I began flute lessons at school that year, so that filled my musical void to a satisfactory enough degree. Since I could already read music, this new instrument came easily to me, and I absolutely loved the sound of it and practiced constantly. Like Mrs. Brenner, my band teacher praised me often.
The week before fourth grade began, I heard my mother lament to my babysitter that she wished she could find another piano teacher for me because I just didn't seem as happy since Beverly Brenner left. That afternoon, my babysitter mentioned to my father that the husband and wife who lived next door were piano professors at the internationally acclaimed music school in The City and that, if he wanted, she could ask them if I could take piano lessons with them. My mother was elated, but I could tell by his expression that my father wasn't sold on the idea. He said he'd run into them several times at my babysitter's house when he was picking me up and found them to be pompous and stuffy. I wasn't sure exactly what that meant, but I gathered it wasn't a particularly ringing endorsement.
Nonetheless, my mother's enthusiasm won out, and lessons began. In no time at all, the meaning of "pompous" and "stuffy" became painfully clear to me.
"Are those the clothes you actually wore to school today, Dear?" the husband asked me one day.
"No, these are my play clothes," I answered.
"Your play clothes?!" he repeated with a sneer. "Where do you play--at the Town Dump?!" That gave him and his wife a really good chuckle.
Another time, he said, "You are very thin and pale," which made his wife ask, "Does your family feed you enough?"
I always felt like Oliver Twist at their house. Plus, I could never please them musically, either. Whatever I played was never fast/slow/loud/quiet/smooth/detached "enough." It seemed to me as if they were never even remotely satisfied with my work the entire time I studied with them. I left their house each week feeling like the stupidest, most inept student on the planet.
I spent two grueling years with these people, never once complaining about them to my parents. Stoicism was a highly prized commodity in our house, and I was convinced that saying my feelings were being hurt every week was not going to be a good enough reason, in my parents' eyes, for me to be allowed to quit. Of course, seeing this now, from an adult's standpoint, I know how misguided that thinking was.
I cried myself to sleep each night for the loss of my beloved Beverly Brenner, who had found me brilliant and stoked my talent.
The last straw was the day the husband chided, in his ever-patronizing, highly sarcastic way, "Well, as long as you're being barbaric enough to chew gum during your piano lesson, the least you could do is chomp it on the beat." That was 'It' for me. Barbaric?! I played two instruments, took ballet lessons every week, and was a Junior Girl Scout in good standing. Barbaric, my ass!
I stopped practicing from that lesson on because the piano seemed joyless to me now and because pleasing that man was the very last thing I ever wanted to do.
So the next week, when my mother reminded me, before leaving for my babysitter's, that I needed to take my piano books with me for my lesson that day, I glowered at her, yanked my books from the piano, threw them to the floor, and screamed, "I am NOT taking piano lessons anymore, and I do not care what you say or what you do to me! I. AM. THROUGH!!"
The woman was absolutely flabbergasted. I was the youngest of her four children by 12 years, quiet, conscientious, obedient, excellent in school, and, unbegrudgingly, everyone's favorite. Yet, without warning, here I was being defiant in epic proportion.
"You have to finish out the year," she said, still visibly shaken. I immediately did the math: four more weeks of torture.
"I'M NOT DOING IT!" I screamed at her; and, to my amazement, with no subsequent discussion on the matter, she conceded.
Lesson: It is not brave to endure perpetual derision and pain. With as many life-affirming alternatives as there are in the world, it is both unnecessary and foolish.
(C) Victorious Days
The following September, I began Junior High; and, after several phone calls to the school, my mother learned that the wife of the new band teacher from Boston taught piano.
"You'll be taking lessons from her," my mother informed me. And because I missed playing so much, I decided I would be willing to follow parental directions once again.
My new teacher wasn't Beverly Brenner --no one ever would be-- but she was kind at all times, even when I gave practicing a low priority to my burgeoning adolescent social life. She never stopped expecting me to be excellent or showing me how to achieve that status as she went over fingerings with me, provided reams of music theory pages to complete each week, and challenged me with piece after piece that seemed impossible to master. But when it came time to audition for college, I tested out of the first two years' worth of piano pedagogy and received a hefty scholarship, the only Vocal Performance Major/Piano Minor to have done so in years, I was told by the head of the department.
Lesson: When teaching is cultivated with encouragement, understanding, and high-but-achievable expectations, there is no end to the blossoming it will render.
| Author Notes | Next time: More life lessons accrue after college as I enter the cut-throat world of professional opera in NYC. |
By Rachelle Allen
After leaving college, I had to have a tonsillectomy, every vocalist's nightmare. But during the year afterward, when my voice was healing and I was not allowed to sing, I attended paralegal school as sort of a Plan B in case my voice never did return and fame and fortune eluded me.
Certainly I wasn't about to merely teach piano! I was, after all, an aspiring operatic soprano with star quality!
In the afternoons, after paralegal classes were over, my vast talent and I waited tables at a nearby restaurant. My father referred to it as "a lesson in humility," adding, "...something you could sorely use." Hmpf!
Finally, though, my voice healed, I resumed lessons with the same beloved voice teacher I'd had since eighth grade. She was a well-known NYC opera diva, herself, who eventually got me the contact I needed to land an audition for the chorus of a big opera company in Manhattan. I was out of my skin with excitement when I received word that I'd been hired for the gig. Off I went to live the dream!
Before much time passed, however, red flags began waving in abundance. First, the pay was not great, so I had to subsidize my paltry wages by becoming a rehearsal pianist for various off-off-off Broadway (think "New Jersey"...) shows.
At one particular audition for such a gig, the show's musical director, a greasy-haired, blubbery-lipped man with coke bottle glasses and a shirt mottled with remnants of his lunch, placed his doughy hand upon my thigh and commented on what a great rehearsal "team" we could make. The way I described the encounter that evening on the phone with my father was, "He may have been talking pianos, but he was thinking organs."
"That's it; you're coming home!" my father said at once.
"I am not coming home," I insisted. "I haven't even been here a month yet. I am going to become a famous opera star. That has always been the goal, and I'm going to make it happen. I'm a big girl. I can handle myself."
But, as the months went on, my struggling-artist lifestyle began to take its toll. Money was tight, so luxuries were few, and the perpetual honking and wheezing of the city traffic wreaked havoc with my countrified sleeping patterns and musician's ears. Plus my two paying gigs each day left me feeling frustrated and unfulfilled.
At opera chorus rehearsals, my assignment was to be the human equivalent of a packing peanut: soften the impact of a precious commodity (the principal) against the harshness of his or her surroundings (the gargantuan stage). Limited movement, limited singing, understated everything. Always think as a group. Refrain from standing out. Less is not just more; it's all you're hired to give.
At rehearsals where I accompanied for off-Broadway shows, Job One was to follow the vocalists. When they lost pitch, it was incumbent upon me to help them find it again, or, occasionally, when that was simply not going to happen, to play in the key toward which they were skittering closest. If they wanted to slow the tempo through a measure or two (or six) and then, without warning, catapult through the next dozen, I was the musical equivalent of Mama Bunny to their recalcitrant Runaway Bunny of children's literature fame, saying, in essence with my instrument, "If you run away, I will run after you, for you are my little bunny!"
Somehow, covering for sub-par vocalists didn't seem like what an aspiring operatic soprano should be doing as her ongoing daily gig.
Finally, one Friday night, half a year later, after a particularly ego-deflating week, I called home, beleaguered, and asked my father, "Why would I be given a talent like this if I weren't going to also be given the personality I needed to accommodate it?"
"That," said my father wisely, "is what you'll have to figure out with your life. That's the path to your happiness."
So very soon afterward, I returned to my town of origin to begin the discovery process.
Lesson: If you try on a dream for size and discover it doesn't fit the way it should, you get to exchange it for Wisdom and something substantially more to your liking.
Next: The teaching part begins!
By Rachelle Allen
I invented my job--sort of. I'm an itinerant voice, flute, and piano teacher with seventy-three stops to make in a week. And although that sounds, even to me, rather over-the-top, the lesson-to-lesson pace of it, broken down into thirty-minute increments over six days, is not really all that taxing. In fact, it's as enjoyable as life gets. I especially like that no two days are ever the same. Still, that's not to say that mine is a stress-free existence. Some of the houses and families I visit would give The Munsters a moment's pause. But, overall, it's fun and fulfilling and fits my personality with the perfection of a Vera Wang gown.
I remember with crystal clarity the day I "became" a teacher, and it had nothing at all to do with my graduation date. I was twenty-five, married, pregnant, and volunteering in a private kindergarten, working with a Master Teacher named Ann who'd begun her career the year I was born.
Among her wards in this class of eight boys and two girls was five-year-old Jesse, doe-eyed, brilliant, and full of life. He was also done being good every day at 11 a.m. It certainly wasn't that he wanted to misbehave or act out on a daily basis; he was simply "young" for his chronological age and, more than likely, in need of a nap.
He loved the patriarch of our class's mouse family, a burly, active rodent named "Big Brownie." The minute we announced each day, "It's Free Time," Jesse was at the dry aquarium scooping his friend up for another shared frolic. One hard-and-fast rule in the room, though, was No Mice In The Wooden Block Corner. (Solid planks of wood up high versus small, furry, nearly weightless bodies below seemed a situation well worth avoiding.)
On this day, during Free Time, the class was busy with easel drawings, board games and wooden block skyscrapers when, as occurred on a daily basis, one of the elaborate block creations came careening to the floor. This time, though, the crash was followed by a chilling scream from Jesse. Ann and I watched as he ran toward us, carrying a furry lump on his outstretched hand. "I don't want to play with Big Brownie anymore!" he wailed. "He doesn't move!" Teeny beads of blood formed at the corner of one side of Brownie's mouth, and his little rib cage was rising and falling at lightning speed.
"We're going to put him in his house for a while," I told Jesse. "But he'll be fine." Ann took me aside and said, "I don't think you should have said that, Rachelle. Now when Big Brownie dies, Jesse is going to be even more upset."
"Ann," I said. "I grew up in the country, in a house surrounded by fifty-two acres of fields. One thing I know for sure is that if you don't kill a rodent on contact, it springs back to life in no time." And sure enough, by morning's end, Big Brownie was running around full speed on his little exercise wheel.
But, in the meantime, kind-hearted, deep Jesse was out of his skin with the realization of what he'd done. He understood, all on his own, that his disobeying the rule had brought pain and fear to his beloved friend. With unbridled fury, he took one arm and swiped it the length of a long shelf of toys, catapulting them in every direction as his classmates ran for cover. He then performed a like maneuver on the shelf below.
"Rachelle, could you please take over the class?" Ann asked. She put a firm, gentle hand on each of her beloved Jesse's shoulders and headed him toward the book corner while the rest of the class and I restored order to our room. Ann lay on her stomach with Jessie in the Book Corner, her arm around his waist, his head nestled into her collarbone. And there they stayed, reading book after book until this sweet boy, with the dearest of hearts and the poor judgment to which all children are entitled, was able to re-calibrate.
I watched with awe and realized, at once, that I had been given the gift of a lifetime to be able to witness something this special. I knew that, in the hands of a lesser teacher, this darling child's entire attitude toward school could have been changed forever. A lesser teacher would have harangued him in a sharp voice. "Jesse! Isn't it bad enough that you nearly killed Big Brownie by having him in the Block Corner when you knew you weren't supposed to? Now you're going to have a tantrum and make a mess of our room? What's wrong with you? Why are you behaving so badly? You go sit in the Time Out Chair until you can settle down!"
But Ann knew better. She knew this child, and she loved him, warts and all. So he went home that day with his self-esteem intact because she always practiced what she preached - the most sacred lesson I ever learned and the one I've lived by ever since:
The children who "deserve" your love the least are the ones who need it the most.
(And it applies to grown-ups, too)
| Author Notes | I have learned a lifetime of valuable lessons by being a teacher. In this book, I share one lesson per chapter. |
By Rachelle Allen
Within a month of returning home, I moved to The City, where, in time, marriage, motherhood, and many unexpected career twists followed.
Winging It
One Friday night, during services at my synagogue, I was seated behind the writer and director of the Men's Club Variety Show. He introduced himself to me afterward, told me my voice was beautiful, and asked if I'd be willing to participate in his upcoming production.
At the first rehearsal, he questioned the cast. "Can anybody here dance?" I raised my hand politely, recalling my formative years at the Marion Sunderville School of Ballet, as well as my times choreographing routines at college for our sixteen-person swing choir. But then I noticed mine was the only arm aloft.
"Think you could work up a few routines to go along with skits I've written, and teach them to the cast?" he asked hopefully.
"Sure," said I. "No problem."
He proceeded to assign me several routines, one of which stands out from all the others: his Borscht Belt rendition of Swan Lake.
The lead was a 60-something bespectacled woman named Golda, and her prince, Sollie, was a stout, silver-haired retired office-supplies salesman with a perpetual smile and the comedic timing of Jerry Seinfeld. Sollie square-danced every Saturday night, he confided to me at once, whereas ballet was going to be a new adventure for him. It was, though, he assured me, one he was very much looking forward to learning.
The back-up-dancer swans were eight men, all over 60, at various stages of hair loss and waistline gain, but twinkly-eyed and full of mirth and mischief and charm. They worked doggedly for me at every rehearsal and never once complained. By our fourth week, these people were so good, I invited our director and the handful of cast members who were working on a skit in the next room to come take a look.
The sight-gag of how completely un-swanlike these ten people were was uproarious. Little wren-like Golda and her gaggle of large ostrich-esque men doing tongue-in-cheek, serious-faced arabesques and pirouettes, all ramrod straight, all on the beat, and all perfectly synchronized, was schtick at its absolute finest. And, when Dress Rehearsal arrived, everything got even better.
On their tippy toes, in big, brown work boots, my swans tramped onto the stage at break-neck speed, swaddled in white thermal onesies that were embellished from the waist down with cascades of frothy white tuille.
Golda came on in what surely must have been a bridesmaid dress from the 60's - hot pink, shiny, foofy, and now shortened to the knees. It was accessorized with a pair of hot pink, sparkly gladiator sandals.
Sollie bounded forth in tights, a flannel nightshirt in Tartan plaid, and a feathered, tri-corner hat.
I've been in countless productions throughout the years; but this one was, by far, the most enjoyable, no close seconds.
Lesson: Dignity is highly overrated. If performing isn't fun, then why is anyone bothering?
Opportunity Knocks
During rehearsal breaks for the Men's Club Variety Show, I put my time to good use by cutting the materials I was going to need the next day at the school where I had met my mentor, Ann. I was on their Sub List by now and was called in often to work.
One night, a woman I recognized as a cast member from the "Perfecting Machine" sketch asked me why I was making dinosaurs, and I explained about the gig awaiting me in the morning.
"Would you be willing to be on the Sub List at the JCC --the Jewish Community Center-- too?" she asked excitedly. "I'm in charge of the Early Childhood Department and am always looking for good teachers. I figure anyone who can work the miracle you did with Sollie and Golda and those swans has got to be extraordinary!"
Two days later, I was called to sub there for a 12-day tour. Another month after that, the pre-school dance teacher resigned, and I was offered --and happily accepted-- the position.
Lesson: Teaching is also a "performing art" and, as such, requires talent and creativity, dedication and hard work that does not go unnoticed by those in the field.
This Time Opportunity Taps
The dance studio at the JCC was outstanding: enormous, with a gleaming hardwood floor, offset by one entire wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, another with a floor-to-ceiling mirror, and a third with two dance barres (a high one for adults and a lower one for children), running the entire length of the studio. Nothing I'd ever been in, even in Manhattan, compared. If only Miss Marion were here to see where her training had taken me!
Just before the new year, however, I was advised that renovations were going to begin soon, and, as a result, traffic was going to be re-routed through the Dance Studio. My classes would have to be held for awhile in one of the auditoriums.
At the end of the second week, I found a note in my mailbox in the Early Childhood Department: "Shelley, Please come to my office. We need to talk. Rose Melnick." ('Shelley' is what I was always called as a child, though my mother's version of it was a little different. I believe I was twelve before I realized my name wasn't really Larry..Linda..Donna..SHELLEY! But since everyone in the Jewish community knew me when I was little, 'Shelley' was the moniker they continued to use. Too bad for me if, after earning my Degrees, I wanted to seem all grown up and reclaim my given name, Rachelle. At the JCC, I was and would always be 'Shelley.')
But back to Rose Melnick.
My heart thumped like the bass drum in an Army band , and I could feel perspiration form on my face and neck. Although I didn't know exactly what Rose Melnick's position was at the JCC, I did know she had a secretary and a private office and was definitely one of the Powers That Be. I also knew her note sounded ominous and that I suddenly felt very sick to my stomach.
I swallowed down my fear and knocked on her half-opened door, unannounced, since her secretary was out.
"Oh, Shelley! Come in!" she invited. "Close the door, though, will you, please?" My stomach lurched.
"Sit down," she coaxed.
I did as instructed then blurted out, "Am I about to be fired?"
"What?" she laughed. "No! As a matter of fact, I have a proposal for you: The JCC is bringing Bob of Sesame Street here for a fund raiser, and I've been looking all over town for a children's choreographer. Then yesterday I'm leaving my office and I see you teaching right across the hall in the Auditorium. I can't believe you've been right here under my nose the entire time! Who knew? So would you be willing to choreograph some numbers for his show?"
She never once used the word "tap," or I would have told her right away I was unschooled in that genre. It wasn't until two weeks later, as she handed me the tapes he'd made of the songs he wanted choreographed, that she said, "There'll be eight numbers for you to do in total: one ballet, four jazz, and three tap, okay?"
While inside I gasped with frenzied horror, "MAY DAY! MAY DAY! Ah-OOOOO-gah!! ABORT MISSION!", to Rose I smiled warmly and said, "Sure! That'll be great!"
When I shared the news that night with my family, my husband gasped. "What are you going to do?" he asked. "You've got to tell her!"
"I can't tell her," I lamented. "I've already signed the contract, and my name is on all the posters. Plus a week from today we're holding auditions." I added, " Honestly, though? I feel like I can do this. I think if you can dance, you can just dance anything."
And so, with that, I went to the mall and bought tap shoes and, en route back home, stopped at the library for a how-to manual. The next seven days found me holed up in our basement, tap shoes on, eyes focused intently on the book in my hands, as I moved like the snazzy-looking girl in the progression of photographs, commanding myself rhythmically, aloud (albeit at a snail's pace), "Shuf-fle-Ball-CHANGE; Shuf-fle-Ball-CHANGE; Fl-AP-Step, Fl-AP-Step; Step-Ball-HEEL!"
A few months later, when the show was over and Rose and I were in her office, basking in the joy and success of the production, I finally confessed everything to her. She gaped at me and cried, "You've got to be kidding! I wouldn't have guessed that in a million years." And, after a beat, she added, "Actually, that just makes the whole thing even better!"
Lesson: Never allow yourself to fall prey to self-imposed limits. Geodes, after all, until they're tapped open, appear to be just plain brown rocks.
| Author Notes | Coming up next chapter: Lessons learned while teaching pre-school dance. |
By Rachelle Allen
Oh, how I loved my pre-school dancers! So full of life! So energetic and perpetually happy! So very pink and/or purple! They lived for their weekly dance class and always tried their best. Plus, they had the most disarming knack for assessing -with deadly candor- the people and situations presented to them.
Appearances
One day, I was feeling glamorous and sophisticated as I swept into the dance studio, wearing my brand new, lipstick red, hooded, woollen scarf.
"Hey, Shelley," said one of my little cherubs, "Why are you wearing that towel on your head?"
A quick glance in the mirrored wall straight ahead, and I realized that, yes, indeed, I actually was not Meryl Streep in The French Lieutenant's Woman, after all. To my horror, I looked substantially more like Rocky Balboa.
Another time, as everyone was getting into street clothes again at the end of class, one little dancer put her dress on over her leotard, folded her arms across her chest, and said, "There! Now I don't care if the boys lift up my dress; they won't see anything!"
"Yeah, why do boys do that anyway?" asked I, seeking enlightenment.
Giving me a look of embarrassed disbelief, she exclaimed, "Because they think girls in short dresses want SEX!" The tone that implied that someone my age really should know that by now. (She was four and had three teenage brothers.)
But the best exchange, by far, was during the conversation we were having as a class, as we sat in our circle for warm-ups. Age was the topic, and everyone was expected to share. When it got to be my turn, I copped to being five-and-three-quarters since that made me older than anyone else in the room.
"Really?!" asked most of the girls, stunned.
"Yes," I insisted. "I'm just very tall for my age."
I watched as their little wheels turned this information over a bit, comparing and contrasting my maturity level with that of their own and, possibly, an older sibling's or two. Then I watched, ever so slightly indignant, at how quickly that concept was accepted as plausible.
One street-smart girl did finally try to shake some sense into everyone. "You're not five-and-three-quarters!" she shouted out with an edge of disdain in her tone.
"I'm not?" I asked. "How old do you think I am?"
"You're, like, 81!!!"
"Wow," I said, "Not even 80?"
Lesson: Always listen when children tell you things. Even if their conclusions aren't exactly spot-on accurate, the undercurrents of their truths are uncannily close.
Stage Fright
Dance classes at the JCC were broken down into ten-week increments. On the last week, we would perform all our routines for the parents. We called them "recitals," but, out of deference to the pre-school need for continuity, everything about them was exactly as it had been the preceding nine weeks when no one was watching: floor warm-ups, barre warm-ups, leaps, turns, chasse, a trip to the water fountain, a run-through of each dance we'd learned, a cool down, and, finally, a group bow. And, it was held right in our beautiful dance studio, too.
Unfortunately, though, until I acquired some experience, I was agog when a dancer or two in each class would become cowed --sometimes even to the point of tears-- by the presence of adoring eyes upon her. It happened every semester and, even in my twelfth year of presenting these shows, I could not predict who would fall prey to it. I was fascinated, though, by how rarely it affected the ones who'd been quiet and reserved all semester.
In my third year, one ballerina's experience was so excruciating that it evoked a change in how I dealt with the affliction forevermore.
Her name was Chloe, and she was three and as cute as life gets, with huge, brown eyes and an infectious smile. Her vivacity and social skills were equally fabulous, and she always learned the dances very quickly. Never would I have expected this little firecracker to have experienced angst when the room filled with parents. She just always seemed so confident!
Yet, when I started the music and sat, facing the class, with my back to the audience, to begin warm-ups, I panned the line of girls before me and noticed that Chloe was glassy-eyed and trembling. I'd learned that sometimes not acknowledging the symptoms, simply continuing on, as if everything were just fine, worked to coax a cutie back to participating. But it was always a toss-up what the outcome would be, and I spent the first five minutes of most recitals holding my breath and beseeching God for mercy.
I always instructed my little dancers to perform directly in front of where their families were seated "so they can get lots of really good pictures of you." This one time, though, I was so very sorry I had.
I heard my stage-frightened girl's mother start to hiss commands at her in rapid-fire, staccato blasts: "CHLOE! PAY ATTENTION!" "STOP JUST SITTING THERE!" "DO WHAT THE OTHER GIRLS ARE DOING!" "I MEAN IT! DO YOUR WARM-UPS! HURRY UP!! GET GOING! I'M NOT KIDDING!"
Surely it wouldn't take Benjamin Spock to realize the folly of this tactic. It's not as if humiliation is ever a motivating force, after all, and against mounting fear, it borders on just plain foolishness.
As the rest of the class headed to the barre, Chloe remained glued to her spot on the floor, now crying with abandon. I went closer, smiled at her with love, and held out my hand to, hopefully, coax her back into the fold, but she had fallen over the edge by now. With immense pomp and drama, her mother stood up, actually pointed at Chloe, and shouted, "EITHER YOU GET OVER THERE TO THAT BARRE RIGHT NOW WITH THOSE OTHER GIRLS OR, I SWEAR TO YOU, I AM LEAVING! I HAVE A LOT OF WORK THAT I SHOULD BE DOING BACK AT THE OFFICE; AND I AM NOT ABOUT TO STAY HERE AND WATCH YOU JUST SIT!!!"
The scene had now reached Bona Fide Debacle status.
My pink tutu'ed little sweetie slumped over now and absolutely howled.
"OKAY, THEN!" trumpeted her mother. "YOU HAVE MADE YOUR CHOICE! I. AM. LEAVING!"
And, with that, she actually trounced out of the room!
Chloe bolted after her, screaming as loudly as her little voice could muster, "NO, MOMMY! NO, MOMMY! NO, MOMMY! PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME!!"
A collective, stunned silence shrouded all the adults in the room, and I felt tiny pinpricks along the entire circumference of my eyelids. I offered a rueful, omniscient glance to my fellow survivors and turned to my remaining dancers and said brightly, "Okay, first position please! Nice straight dancer backs. Ready? Demi-plie'. One, two..."
When the recital was over, I got some construction paper and markers from the Early Childhood storage room and drew a picture of a ballerina and her teacher doing high leaps. All around the border, I drew red and purple flowers, and then I wrote:
Dear Chloe,
Roses are red,
Violets are blue;
You're a great dancer,
And I love you.
XOXOXO
Shelley
I dropped it off in her JCC daycare room, and the teacher, after I recounted the horror story, assured me she'd give it to Chloe the minute she awoke from her nap.
From that day on, I always included the following paragraphs in my letters home to the parents about upcoming Recital Days:
There's a fascinating commodity that performers in the creative arts can fall prey to: stage fright. What's amazing about it is that, contrary to what anyone would think, it can actually affect even the most confident and outgoing of souls. Stranger still is the way it can also be so inconsistent. One time it may be of no concern at all to a dancer, and, at the next performance, it can make him or her completely freeze up.
I always appreciate how supportive and enthusiastic the JCC parents are about these recitals. I cannot get over how, every ten weeks, at one, two, and three o'clock in the afternoon, we are dancing to a full house. And, likewise, I understand how disappointing it can be to leave work and then have your cutie not want to dance.
But we're making memories here, so, if your dancer simply cannot perform this time, then please give him or her a warm hug, bring your sweetie onto your lap, and enjoy watching the show together. It's still a fun time you're sharing, after all, and you know very well that, the minute you get home, he or she will perform every last routine for you with gusto and panache.
Thankfully, never again did stage fright ruin anyone's JCC Dance Recital experience.
Lesson: Sometimes the best you can do is damage control.
Next time: Performing Arts Camp experiences!
By Rachelle Allen
In 1992, a summer performing arts camp was a groundbreaking idea. So, of course, my friend and role model, dynamo Rose Melnik, would be the one to conceive and institute one at the JCC.
I was flattered and very excited when she asked if I’d work with her again, and had many memorable experiences throughout the five years I worked there.
Far Too Many Legs In The Dance Studio
In the middle of morning dance class with the nine-year-olds, I suddenly noticed that someone had positioned a big, fat rubber spider right in the middle of the floor. I gave the class a look of amused omniscience, and they all smiled mischievously back as I headed over to pick it up before we began our floor work . I decided to embellish on the fun they'd already provided for us by doing chaine' turns over to our interloper. Arriving at my destination, I extended one leg behind myself and, like a seesaw, elevated it higher and higher as I lowered my torso and arms closer to the prop. My audience was doubled over with amusement. At the last moment, for added drama, I leaped away, then, en pointe, returned to it and gave it the most delicate of touches with my slippered feet.
It was then that we realized it was not really a rubber spider, after all. It exploded on contact into hundreds of thousands of teeny baby spiders that shot out in every direction, like fireworks, as they tried to find their now-deflated mommy, who was scurrying to a safe hiding spot somewhere beneath the nearest baseboard.
There was a moment of deathly silent incredulity from everyone, and then pandemonium erupted. It was the strangest vision of teeny spiders and young, screaming campers both doing pretty much the same choreography of frenzied spirals and spastic turns.
I dashed from the room to get a jumble of wet paper towels and perform an act of arachnicide; but, unfortunately, in my fervor to regain order and control, I neglected to mention this mission to my seventeen-year-old assistant, who imagined she was suddenly a solo act at the worst possible moment in history.
Oh, how relief sprang forth from every one of her facial features as I returned with the munitions, handed her half, and, together, we sopped up the pinprick-sized invaders.
We spent the remainder of our class time in the lobby, each of us taking turns recounting our own personal rendition of our collective nightmare, while the custodial staff mopped down the entire dance studio, sprayed it with insecticide, and then mopped it again a second tiem - and then a third.
Lesson: The most creative choreography one ever creates can be inspired by the rawest of animal instincts.
Keeping Abreast of Current Events
During the same summer as our camp spider adventure, our City government humiliated itself by caving in to the PC-minded zealots, who insisted men and women are so completely equal that law should mandate everyone who so chose could walk around shirtless.The spokesmodels who had lobbied for the law became known as The Top-Free Ten.
Our mid-day routine at camp was to take our bag lunches to the area known as the Picnic Pavilion and relax for forty-five minutes. It was located behind the building and backed up to the bike and jogging path that ran the length of the canal that graces our region. As I sat with Rose and two other faculty one particularly warm day, the drama teacher looked down the path, squinted, and said, "Whoa! That almost looks like...oh my lord, it IS! There’s a woman jogging this way with no top on!"
One of the campers had spied her, too. In record time, all seventy-six of them, ages eight to eighteen, including the Assistants and Assistants-in-Training, were lined up with their tippy toes grazing the blacktop, fingers pointing flagrantly, as they laughed the raucous, unbridled belly laughs for which children are famous.
"Should I make them stop?" gasped Rose.
"Absolutely not!" said I. "Why should she get to be the only who makes a statement?"
And with that, the woman jogged by, her lily white coke bottles step-ball-changing with each stride.
Lunch ended really early that day. No one seemed to have much of an appetite.
Lesson: You can learn every bit as much from a bad example as you can a good one.
The Show Must Go On
Tech Week, the five days before a show opens, is always nerve-wracking. Stress and worry and fears about what could happen when the curtain goes up are so pervasive, they’re practically palpable.
One year, at our performing arts camp, these feelings were made even worse by the fact that the campers had been slacking the entire summer. Even by the final Dress Rehearsal, they still didn’t know their lines or their entrances. We, the faculty, were at our wits’ end. The Drama Director never lost his sense of humor about it, at least. At lunch, after the morning’s frightfully bad Full Dress Run-Through, as the Music Director and I sat there, looking haunted and lobotomized, the Drama Director chided, "It’s easier for you two. You’re still young yet. You can leave town, change your names." We returned to the salt mines at 1:00 and tried one final time to salvage the show.
Rose wrote the plays each year for camp, and this one was particularly clever: What life would have been like if all the Biblical characters had carried cell phones. Very creative and entertaining.
There was a loft perched above the set where the camper who was playing "God," in a white robe, sat with his back to the audience for the entire performance. When we realized how many lines the campers were forgetting, it struck us what an especially perfect set-up this was. We simply gave God a script to hide on his lap and increased his role to "God And Prompter." His only disadvantage was that, since he couldn’t see the stage, he had no idea who was or wasn’t present and accounted for.
The best moments occurred in the scene where Biblical character Sarah, age eighty-plus, was supposed to call her husband, Jacob, age ninety-plus, with the news that she was pregnant. Unfortunately, too many campers were milling about in the wings on Stage Left and made it impossible for Sarah and her walker to get through in time for her entrance. Jacob had dawdled on Stage Right for her as long as he possibly could and finally accepted that he had no choice but to do the scene alone. He was going to have to ad lib.
Looking at his cell phone, then at the audience, he exclaimed, "Oh look! A text message from Sarah! It says we’re going to have a baby!"
The music started up for their love duet and dance and, thinking quickly, our creative thespian sang adoringly to his walker, instead, and then waltzed around the stage with it, in a loving embrace. It was too bad that Rose, in the interest of finding out what had happened to Sarah, had left her seat between the Drama Director and me because we were convinced she would have loved this hysterical theme-and-variation of her play.
With just a one-second blackout –no curtain– the scene was then supposed to switch to ten years later, with Sarah, in her kitchen, lamenting on the phone with God about what a handful Isaac had become. Isaac, in turn, was supposed to buzz around her and act as annoying as possible. The problem, once again, was that Sarah was still nowhere to be found. Worse, the camper playing Isaac was ten in Real Life, too, and only doing this gig because his family had missed the enrollment deadline for soccer camp, and his mother said he had to do something all day. Our camp had openings, so that was that. He was begrudgingly marking time with us each day and rarely got where he was supposed to be at the right moment.
God deduced something was amiss, having just sat through Jacob’s love duet solo and concluded –rightfully so– that it must now be his turn to ad lib.
"I think I’ll call Sarah," he said, completely off-script now, hoping, hoping the Musical Director would follow his lead and play the ringtone on the keyboard. He did. He stopped after three rings and God continued, "Hi, Sarah; God here. I know you’re not home right now, but I wanted to leave you a message." Jacob and his walker, also completely off-script, hustled on stage now to catch the phone.
"God? God?! It’s Jacob. Sarah’s out at the moment. I need to talk to you about Isaac."
Suddenly, from Stage Right, Isaac appeared, looking totally baffled. He knew this all seemed vaguely like the scene he was used to acting out every day, and yet, at the same time, it was also terribly different. He decided he’d carry on until someone yelled at him and/or explained what he was really supposed to be doing. He zoomed his little balsa wood plane around Jacob’s face, as he’d been accustomed to doing around Sarah’s. Jacob had never been on stage for this scene before and had no idea what the dialogue was supposed to be. Enter God And Prompter.
"I bet you want to say Isaac’s name," he told Jacob.
"Isaac!" shouted Jacob.
"I bet you want to tell him to stop bugging you," said God And Prompter.
"Stop bugging me, Isaac!" echoed Jacob.
"I bet you want to—"
"I’ll handle this, God," said Jacob, astute enough to realize the scene was looking less amusing and more irretrievably stupid by the minute. "Isaac, I’m on the phone with God. Please go to your room." He pointed the way, and Isaac, totally weirded out by it all anyway, was more than happy to oblige. But with a priceless final flourish of obliviousness, he exited in the opposite direction of Jacob’s extended arm.
After the curtain call, the campers gathered in the theater seats for one last critique. Opening Night was now just three hours away. Rose, who always lavished grandmotherly warmth and praise and kindness on all her beloved campers, was livid and read them the riot act for a good 15 minutes. Ditto for the Music Director, Drama Director and me. The children sat there motionless and ashen.
Then, somewhere in the next hours, a miracle occurred. The production was absolutely flawless from beginning to end! No missed cues, no dropped lines, no obstructed entrances. Absolutely unbelievable. And, to this day, we four faculty members shake our head at its memory.
Lesson: Even in retrospect, there is no comfort or enjoyment in a near-miss.
NEXT TIME: Finale', Act I - leaving the JCC and beginning the next phase of this wonderful gig I call my career: teaching private voice, flute, and piano lessons.
| Author Notes | Special thanks to Cammy Cards for the cover photo. |
By Rachelle Allen
A look at my history, and it couldn't be all that surprising that my segue from teaching nursery school and dance to teaching piano, flute and voice came about completely by chance.
One of my original nursery school moms had enrolled her children, now older, in the JCC summer performing arts program. Near the end of camp one day, she saw me working with one of her daughters on a vocal solo for the show.
"Shelley! You sing and play piano?" she asked, flabbergasted.
"Yes, that was what I majored in in college," I told her. "I just did Dance for fun."
"Do you give lessons?" she asked, her voice full of hope.
"Well, I don't, but I certainly could," I conceded.
"This is absolutely incredible," she said. "Just this very morning three of my neighbors and I were sitting at my kitchen table and saying how great it would be if we could find a really NICE piano teacher --one who loved kids and was fun and not so strict that they hated lessons, but who could make them be good at music. And one of us even said, 'Hey, as long as we're fantasizing here, wouldn't it also be great if she came to each of our houses instead of us having to go to hers?'"
She looked me square in the eyes. "If you ever decide to change careers, Shelley, you'd have our ten kids as your students right off the bat."
I humored her with a smile and a pleasant laugh before saying, "Alright, thanks!" and went on my way. But before I even reached the parking lot, I knew what had just happened: That was opportunity knocking.
The semester before summer camp had begun, I'd sensed a change in the way the Powers-That-Be at the JCC were dealing with teachers. Our creativity was being squelched more and more, and we were constantly being 'advised' by non-educators on how to run our classrooms more efficiently.
At first, I told myself to stop being so spoiled --that no one's job is perfect. I needed to buck up and deal with the changes. The positives still outweighed the negatives by far.
But then, as the semester progressed, the higher-ups began wanting to change me. I should be less effusive and more understated when dealing with parents, they said. They strongly suggested I teach more technique and maybe fewer actual dance routines in my classes (to the pre-schoolers?! Good grief!). And, finally, they wanted me to increase the size of my classes to accommodate more members. I put my foot down with that one. Nine three-year-olds at a time was perfect, I told them, and ditto for twelve four- and five-year olds per class.
Fortunately, because I was teaching fifteen pre-school dance classes and a like number of school-age dance classes per week, I had the fiscal clout to stand my ground. But I knew I'd put myself in their cross-hairs by not capitulating and that that was going to be a problem in no time.
I had two choices: I could start another school year teaching dance at the JCC, chafing under the scrutiny of non-teachers who knew nothing about the way to run a joyous, successful class. Or I could take a leap of faith in myself and teach the way I knew was best.
Before camp began the next morning, I sought out the mom I'd spoken with the previous afternoon and said, "I'd love to teach voice and piano lessons to your girls, and to your neighbors' children, as well. And I'll do it in each of your homes."
She was so elated, she squealed, then jumped up and down, and hugged me.
Even with such hoopla and positive reinforcement, the realization was bittersweet: It was time to trade in my dance shoes for a keyboard again and return to my roots.
Rose, always in my corner, let me send a flier home with our eighty campers, and, three weeks later, when the new school year began, I had fifteen students. By January, it had mushroomed to twenty-five, and by the following September, the roster had swelled to forty.
Lesson: There is no end to the vehicles available to transport us to new adventures. Test-driving as many as possible keeps life fun and challenging.
NEXT: Act Two: Voice, Flute, and Piano Lessons
By Rachelle Allen
Not unlike the talk shows that invite animals and their trainers to visit their sets, some of my most memorable times feature unusual encounters with pets, too.
By Rachelle Allen
When I teach music in people's homes, house pets like Tiki the gerbil and her relatives with hairless tails and long, flesh-colored fingers --the kind that look like they could play piano-- make me want to scream. Literally. But that's not the case when it comes to creatures with feathers who are granted flight privileges in their homes. No, no; they make me run and duck and flail my arms a lot. This I discovered one night when Claude, my student's African gray parrot, waddled into the room where I was teaching.
Claude was an avian with a Rhodes Scholar vocabulary and an array of circus tricks that included saying "Meow" when the family cat walked by and "Woof, woof" when it saw the two dogs. Further, I was told that his greeting every morning to the first person who walked by his cage was, "Claude want OUT!"
He gave me a challenging look that made my breathing speed up as he strutted past my chair. But when he fluttered to the couch, just inches from my shoulder, I summoned every ounce of false bravado I had and drew myself to a standing position. I pointed at him, gave him a solemn stare, and commanded, in my best No Nonsense Teacher Voice, "STAY!"
With a look of furious indignation, he aimed his ample beak at my gaping eyeballs and turned himself into a feathered missile.
Had my student not been doubled over with laughter, I just know she would have been more help. But instead, my cavalry came in the form of the matriarch of the house.
Hearing the cacophony of my screams and frantic footfalls, in counterpoint to Claude's flapping wings and hoarse war cries, she sensed trouble, dashed in, and summoned my attacker to her shoulder with a piercing whistle from her pursed lips.
Claude no longer had flight privileges on Piano Lesson Night.
Lesson: Being bossy isn't always an effective way to deal with subordinates, especially those outside one's immediate jurisdiction.
NEXT: Unexpected Artistry by the pet dog.
By Rachelle Allen
While her kindergarten-aged daughter, Kate, and their bulldog, Spike, played in the fenced-in back yard, one of my piano moms (adult piano students) began a beautiful rendition of Fur Elise. Her phrasing well was excellent, her fingering was perfect, and she controlled the tempo of the piece with panache and aplomb. Just as she reached the final page, though, Kate dashed in, breathless, eyes agape, and shouted, "Mom! You've gotta come see this! Spike just pooped an 'R'!"
My student, startled from her reverie, gave a quick glance toward her daughter. Then, as the child's words soaked in, she looked at me with both embarrassment and apology in her eyes.
"Can I come, too?" I asked Kate.
"Sure!" She waved an invitation, and out we all hurried to the back yard where, sure enough, there was a plump, picture-perfect calligraphy-style "R" in doggy-doo.
"Wow, that's amazing," I admitted.
"It really is," agreed the piano mom.
"Do you think Spike is like the spider in Charlotte's Web? Do you think he's leaving us a secret message?" Kate asked with breathless hope and wonderment.
"Maybe," offered her mother, straight-faced, not willing to quash this magic moment.
I leaned near my student's ear and whispered, "Yeah; he's spelling out Ridiculous Family Here."
She smirked and gave me a friendly elbow to the ribs.
Lesson: Artistry and talent can be found in unexpected places. Personal enrichment hinges on our willingness to keep an open mind and explore every opportunity that is presented.
NEXT TIME: What happens when you mix a student who never practices with her dog who hates my guts.
By Rachelle Allen
The joke in our house has always been that I was a dog in a former life: I have an amazing sense of smell, incredible hearing, and kids and dogs love me. Well, except for the one at the Gottlieb house.
Butterball Gottlieb was a short, high-strung sort who snarled and bared his little teeth at me every week. "It's because you wear hats," his family advised, but nothing changed the one time I remembered to leave mine in the car. There was no way around it: the dog simply hated me.
Ditto for the youngest of my four students there, none of whom practiced very often. At the onset of our lesson, I said, "So, shall we begin?" and she rejoined, "I don't really care." She elevated her chin and gave me a taunting look. The Pippy Longstocking braids definitely belied the demon within this one.
"Why not?" I asked, still in Perky Piano Teacher mode.
"Because I didn't practice at all this week," she said with antagonistic zeal.
Now, with my No Nonsense Teacher Voice, I intoned, "Really? Then whatever shall we do for the next half hour?"
"I don't know," she shrugged. "And I really don't care. I hate piano lessons."
"Really," said I, meeting her defiant gaze with a steely one of my own.
"I also hate you," she added with the wickedest of smiles.
With that, I rose and went into the kitchen, where Spawn of Satan's mother was busily emptying the dishwasher. "Um, this piano lesson thing just isn't working well," I began. I then
went on to share that not only had no one practiced the entire week but that Child Number Four had also voiced flagrant distaste for me, personally. Chagrined, the mother paid me, and I returned to the living room to collect my belongings one last time.
By this point, though, Evil Girl was holding Butterball, and, having heard my exchange with her mother, was in full In-For-A-Penny-In-For-A-Pound mode. She tossed her feral little fur ball at me and shouted, "SIC HER, BUTTERBALL!"
Sweeter words had never made their way to little Butterball's ears. All his doggie dreams had come true, and he wasted no time following his mistress's command to the letter.
Lesson: Under the right circumstances, anyone can set world land records for speed--even in three-and-a-half-inch stiletto heels.
NEXT: Kindergarteners: a breed apart.
By Rachelle Allen
By Rachelle Allen
By Rachelle Allen
Further evidence that Saturday mornings were cursed when it came to successful piano lessons.
By Rachelle Allen
In any line of work that requires travel, the vehicle by which one gets from Point A to Point B is an integral part of life. In my case, a lot of thought goes into selecting my car because it is the first impression a family gets of me when I park in their driveway and the lasting image once I leave. Sometimes, though, these families also manage to leave a lasting impression on MY car when they leave!
By Rachelle Allen
The day I had eye surgery, the mom of one of my piano students called to ask if she and her eight-year-old daughter could bring me some cookies they'd made. Touched by their thoughtfulness, I said, "Sure!" But when I caught a glimpse of myself as I passed a mirror, I worried that the surgical patch on my left eye could be a bit unnerving to someone so young. Thinking quickly, I tied a leopard bandanna, buccaneer-style, on my head, clamped on one big gold hoop earring, and secured one of my daughter's stuffed penguins onto the top of my shoulder. (Just my luck --thirty stuffed penguins in that room, yet not one parrot.)
As soon as I saw the car pull into our driveway, I dashed outside. I even shaped my index finger into a hook for extra effect.
But, wait! Oh gawd; it wasn't them.
My husband exited the passenger side, and we gaped at each other. "Honey!" he croaked, still gaping.
"Bobby!" I croaked back, finger still aloft and hook-shaped. "What are you doing here?"
By now, the driver was beside us: the Sales Manager from the car dealership not far away, there to take me for a test drive in this lovely vehicle.
"Argh," I said to him, figuring as long as it was this ridiculous, I might as well just go for broke. "Mighty fine vessel ye got here, Matey."
All he could do was stare. (A speechless car salesman? This was epic.)
We went for the drive, and I decided that, yes, I did, indeed, like this vehicle and wanted to purchase it. We scheduled an appointment for the following afternoon to draw up the necessary paperwork.
The next morning, I had an appointment with the surgeon to remove the patch from my eye. When he finished, he handed me an enormous pair of post-operative sunglasses and instructed that under no circumstances was I to remove them for the next twenty-four hours.
I went to the car dealership at our pre-arranged time, and as I entered the Manager's office, I saw the Light of Understanding jump into his eyes. It read loud and clear, "Ohhh! NOW I get her!"
Hurrying over and graciously extending his hand, he asked, "And who are we today --Jackie O.?"
Lesson: Today's humiliations are tomorrow's favorite stories for others as well as for ourselves.
NEXT: Out-maneuvering the fire department.
| Author Notes | My piano student and her mom did stop by with the cookies --while I was out doing my pirate test-drive. They left them on our back deck, so as soon as I returned home, I called the mom and shared the story. Oh, the laughter from her end of the phone line! The next day, I called her again, after Part II of the saga that all got started because of her thoughtfulness and generosity! |
By Rachelle Allen
I was halfway through Saturday lessons as I basked in the warmth and glorious sunshine of the May day, drinking in the sight of vibrant bursts of red and yellow tulips. As I drove between lessons, the windows down, I savored the smell of the air, redolent with lilacs and new grass, and basked in the beauty of the Spring sky, blue as cornflowers, and filled with cotton ball clouds. All day, the students had shown great progress with their recital pieces, and I stoked the fantasy of how perfect that event would be just two Sundays away. Life, indeed, was good.
My reverie was broken by sirens, though, the same ones that had been a distant drone since leaving my last student's home. Now, though, they were painful in their proximity. Then I saw why: an enormous fire truck sat parked in front of a house one cul-de-sac over, and firefighters and neighbors were swarming the area. I had only moments to act before I would fall prey to the barricade heading my way and be delayed indefinitely. I took a quick left, then an equally quick right, and did, indeed, avoid the barricade. But alas! The fire hose running down the middle of the street gave me a moment's pause.
Knowing that time was of the essence if I were going to make it out of this labyrinth of streets --the kind with trendy names like "Tyler Trail" and "Caitlyn Crescent" after the developer's obviously adorable children-- and back onto the main drag and the students left on the day's roster, I was going to have to be a little ingenious. Perhaps even a little James Bondian.
Oddly enough, straddling the fire hose with my car seemed like the perfect solution. Or at least it did until I hit a metal joint on the fire hose and got stuck...and made the hose stop pumping water onto the smoldering house one block back. With frenzied abandon, I rocked my trapped little Star (the Jetta) Trek from Reverse to Drive until my forearm went numb. Nothing. All she did was make keening sounds like a chihuahua in a mouse trap while, into my ears wafted, "WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?" and 'WE GOT NO PRESSURE! SOMEONE GO CHECK THIS DAMN HOSE!" and, finally, "HURRY!"
A jumble of men in shiny yellow raincoats and helmets barreled into view in my side mirror, as did clots of curious neighbors, and the screams they emitted were nothing short of mutinous. "ARE YOU FREAKIN' KIDDING ME OR WHAT?" followed by, 'THIS BROAD DROVE RIGHT OVER THE HOSE!"
It took several of the fire fighters to hold down the hose --on their bellies, no less-- while I backed up to free little Star from the impinged joint. The fire chief came over, his face scarlet, veins bulging like purple ropes from neck to temples, and screamed, "YOU GET THIS CAR TO THE CURB, LADY. AND DON'T! YOU! MOVE! IT! AGAIN!"
The neighbors all glowered and watched with great sanctimony for me to get my due as the sheriff came to my window to ask for an explanation. "Well," I began lamely, "I teach piano lessons...,"
He listened politely then went back to his squad car with my license, registration, and insurance card in hand. I took this moment to call my husband for back-up. "Bobby!" I gasped. "Come quick! I'm in big trouble somewhere near Lindsay Lane. Hurry!" Upon the officer's return, he asked where my proper license plates were.
"These are the only ones I know about," I said, feeling a black dread starting to creep into my stomach.
"These are improper plates. As of March first, they were no longer supposed to be on your vehicle. Did you receive new plates in the mail, Ma'am?"
I gulped and said, "Yes, in February. But I thought they were for the car I bought my daughter in January."
"And where are they now?" He threw me a stern look, likely trying to decide if anyone could really be this vacant or if he was on the receiving end of the world's most convoluted snow job.
I sounded like a four-year-old when I replied, "On her car...at college." I added, "Tomorrow is her birthday!" and smiled lamely. I have no idea why.
"Well, Ma'am, I can't let you drive this vehicle with improper plates. I'll do you a favor, though, and I won't impound it. But I'm going to take the plates, and you will not be able to drive it until the other plates are on it."
"But they're on my daughter's car...at college,"I said once again, still in my involuntary baby-talk voice. (This time, though, I at least had the dignity not to repeat the nugget about her birthday.)
"Yes, Ma'am, I understand that," he said, still so polite and patient. "There's also a potential fine of seventy-five dollars per day for each day since March first that you've been driving with these improper plates."
"A day?" I gasped, doing the calculations in my head with an algorithm that included teaching piano lessons from my room in a federally subsidized nursing home and the potential sale of future grandchildren.
He added, "And the fire chief feels you've damaged the hose, and that will probably cost at least eighteen hundred dollars." As if on cue, two fire fighters, screw drivers and my improper plates in hand, appeared, gave me nasty smiles, and, with the symbolism of it lost on none of us, handed over the hardware that had secured the expired plates to my vehicle.
"Do you have a ride home, Ma'am?" the officer asked.
"Yes, I've called my husband," I managed to choke out.
"And you'll need to get this vehicle removed from here, too," he said, still very patient and polite.
"I have a towing service." My voice now constricted to an out-and-out whisper.
But when I called Triple A, the operator explained with a brusque, officious tone that, without license plates, my car could not be towed by them. "But I live just a tiny ways down from here," I implored her as I watched the fire truck leave and the neighbors all turn their stares now on me and my outlaw car. Surely tar and feathers were mere moments away.
"I'm sorry, Ma'am," she snapped with a strident, punishing tone. "That is our policy!"
Just then my husband appeared. Because of the roadblocks, he'd had to hoof it from the main drag down to the inner chambers of the development, but his instinct had told him to follow the sounds of the firemen's walkie-talkies and he would find me. He was kind enough not to laugh as I expounded on (and on) about how my day had spiraled from "quite ideal" to "a complete nightmare" in just forty minutes. And he didn't even lecture, either, bless his wonderful heart. He simply drove us home. And there, to our incredulity, at the kitchen table, sat our college girl, who said she really couldn't explain why, but she'd felt an urge to drive home for her birthday. Best of all, she even had my plates in her trunk --in their original envelope, no less-- because she'd realized from the beginning that the ones on her car already matched what was on her registration card.
We trekked back to the scene of my crime, got my vehicle up to code, and then drove back home to start the birthday festivities a little early...with copious amounts of wine.
Lesson: In the card game of life, sirens, emergency vehicles, and, most of all, fire hoses, trump piano lessons.
NEXT: Holiday Fun
By Rachelle Allen
My jewelry of choice one week in December was a pin that had been bestowed upon me in an act of appreciation at the Dollar Store by a man I’d let go ahead of me in line. It was a round, white lapel pin that showcased a green "L" surrounded by a red circle with a diagonal line across it. No "L." Get it? Noel. Very cute.
So I wore it to all my students’ lessons, challenging, "Can you read my pin? It’s a holiday greeting." The kids, regardless of age, saw the "L" for exactly what it was: a letter. They, almost without exception, solved the riddle within minutes.
But nothing could have been further from the case with their parents. To them, the "L" had to represent something, and suddenly, my perky little greeting became a sort of ink blot test.
Two moms, both with workaholic husbands whoI see only on Recital Day, thought the pin said, "No Love." Similarly, one of the dads, a bit of a smarmy, Casanova type, thought my holiday greeting was "No lovin’?" (Eww.)
A psychiatrist mom, with a predominantly female clientele, suggested that the pin I was showing to every child I taught said, "No Lesbians," while a dad who’s a bona fide candidate for alpha male poster child boomed with conviction, "NO LOSERS!"
A couple who’d been living for months under the duress of home renovations both said, independently of each other, "No angles?" while "No Life" was the offering I got from a sleep-deprived mother of four as she removed socks and underpants that had accumulated beneath the piano bench.
But the best guess by far came from an elderly woman I teach who knows I’m Jewish (but lets me come into her home every week anyway). She read my pin, blanched, and gasped, "No CHRISTMAS?"
Lesson: The older you are, the more difficult it becomes to see life in its purest, most lighthearted form.
NEXT: The Dreydl Song
| Author Notes | Ink blot tests: any of several psychological tests based on the interpretation of irregular figures, such as blots of ink. |
By Rachelle Allen
For the majority of piano teachers I know, the song they forbid their students to play in their presence is Heart and Soul. There are only so many repetitions a person can bear to hear in a lifetime.
But I would gladly listen to --and even participate in-- a thousand choruses of Heart and Soul if I never again had to hear even five notes of the over-sung Hanukkah tune I Have A Little Dreydl. (So WHAT if I’m Jewish.)
With all the gorgeous melodies my tribesmen have composed throughout the centuries, how this obnoxious little ditty ever came to be so universally recognized and sung, I cannot understand. To me, it is the Jewish equivalent of This is the Song That Never Ends. All I know is that I flatly refuse to allow my students to play it.
This all started my fifth year of teaching, when I had an exceptionally large Jewish clientele and copies of The Dreydl Song that I doled out to them all. By the last day before vacation, four weeks later, I had to go to that Safe Place Where No One Can Hurt Me in my mind whenever a student began to serenade me with it.
Finally, after finishing the lesson at the last house on the last day before December Break, my adorable little eight-year-old student presented me with a gorgeously wrapped box.
"Happy Hanukkah!" she shouted. "Open it now!"
"Okay!" I began tearing away the beautiful blue and gold foil paper. Inside, was a large, expensive-looking mug in blue and creamy white with lavish Judaic designs all over it. "Oh, this is spectacular!" I exclaimed.
"Pretend you’re drinking out of it," my little angel urged with eyes that twinkled with excitement.
"Okay," I smiled, loving her enthusiasm.
I put the cup to my lips, tilted my head back, and heard a tinkly music box play very loudly: I HAVE A LITTLE DREYDLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
That beautiful cup has a permanent spot at the very, very back of my mug cupboard. And there it will be for generations to come. I know this because I made my husband cement it to the shelf paper.
Lesson: One must take whatever steps necessary to avoid madness
NEXT: Ensuring students learn what they are no longer allowed to have in school: The Holiday Songs Challenge.
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