Woodwind Instruments

The children in my family have always played in the school band. Joey was Oboe, Melinda Saxophone, Helen was the Flute and well me the youngest I fell in love with the Clarinet the diva of the woodwind instruments at least to my mind. I think that we loved woodwind instruments as a family because both of our parents played woodwind instruments in the cities classical orchestra.

I can remember as a baby waking up in the orchestra pit and listening to the beautiful tones of the woodwind instruments. I would be listening for only a short while before the musical woodwind instruments would lull me back to sleep again only to wake on our way home long after the sounds of the woodwind instruments had stopped and we were in the car. I could see the silhouettes of my parent’s heads in the front seat and all was right in the world.

So when it came to my turn to join the school band I of course joined the woodwind instruments section and loved every minute of learning the new music and performing at the football games, concerts and we even competed in competitions. In fact it was at one of these competitions that my love of woodwind instruments almost cost us our place in the competition – almost but not quite.

As usual we traveled up by bus the day before all of the band members that played the woodwind instruments sat together and we talked about the competition our part in the music and played through bits of the music – we were very serious competitors on the school band scene and we always practiced hard.

When we arrived at the hotel that we were staying at everyone was meeting in the restaurant for dinner as it was getting late it was my job to look after everyone’s woodwind instruments and make sure that they were deposited in our room before I joined the others for dinner.

We were in the foyer and I was watching the woodwind instruments =being unloaded onto a trolley when something caught my eye. There was a young girl sitting on a couch in the foyer quietly playing the clarinet – my favorite of the woodwind instruments.

There was something very wistful and beautiful about the way she was playing and I had to get closer I was very intrigued as only a 15 year old boy can be. She didn’t notice me sit on the couch next to her and I got so caught up in her beautiful playing that when the bell boy asked me about our woodwind instruments I waved him away everything forgotten except for the music that I was listening to.

She eventually noticed me but kept on playing till the end of the piece and she asked me my name. It turned out that she was from one of the rival schools that we would be competing against the next day in the band competition. We talked for a while till she said that she had to go and I watched her disappear into the lift to go to her room.

I wasn’t hungry just tired so I texted my band members that I was just going to get a snack in the room and headed upstairs to have a nap while I had the room to myself. I fell asleep thinking of the woodwind instruments beautiful music and had a lovely dream about the girl and walking through a pretty forest hand in hand with the music playing like a movie soundtrack.

That was until I was rudely woken up by my fellow woodwind instruments players back from the restaurant and they were looking all panicked about something. I was still half asleep so it took me a moment to comprehend what they were saying. They were asking me where our woodwind instruments were and then I remembered I had no idea really.

I had not seen the woodwind instruments since I had become so transfixed by the music in the lobby I had assumed that they had been delivered to our room but looking around I could see that they hadn’t. Our other bags were there but no woodwind instruments.

My heart sank and I didn’t know what to do. I looked into the furious eyes of my band mates and I knew that I had to think of something and quick to find our woodwind instruments or this was going to get ugly.

I left the room in a hurry to talk to the management of the hotel first to see if they knew where our woodwind instruments were and that began what was probably the longest night of my very young life. I felt like I had let my teammates down and apart from the competition being on the next day the woodwind instruments were very valuable to everybody and for many not replaceable I had to get them back but it wasn’t going to be straightforward.

I spoke to the desk manager about the woodwind instruments and he spoke to the bellboys, as there had been a change of shift nobody could tell me where our woodwind instruments were. It turned out ok after a sleepless night for me the woodwind instruments were found in a storeroom. They had been taken there when the bellboy who knew where they belonged had been taken ill suddenly and rushed to hospital.

My band mates were all relieved the next day when I showed up with their woodwind instruments an hour before the competition – a bit too close for comfort.