At lunch, I sat with Cliff and Chris as usual. I’d waited the rest of the morning for Kevin to page me, but he hadn’t. Not that I had expected him to, now. After seeing how he was in Dad’s office, I thought the likelihood of Kevin asking me for anything at all was pretty remote. His body language had made him look utterly defeated. His not wanting to look at me I could interpret in a couple ways, but wanting me around him to help him, even if he needed me, wasn’t one of those ways.
We were eating outside where I could see into the cafeteria and I was watching the door into it, so I saw him when he entered the room. He was all by himself. I stopped eating and went inside so I could see. He walked over to the serving line, put a tray on the metal rail shelf, then started pushing it along. I watched him. He grabbed a couple items and put them on his tray, then picked up a carton of milk and some silverware. He showed the cashier his card, which she punched. Then I saw him look down at his tray, and simply stop. He thought for a second, then reached over and across it and sort of jammed one side against his stomach and pulled it into himself, then picked it off the rails that way.
I immediately went over to him, walking fast so I could help him. He’d taken a few steps by the time I reached him. When I got there, I blocked his way and reached for his tray. He looked up and saw me for the first time.
I saw his expression go from neutral to recognition to something that was almost anger. He didn’t really look angry, but came close to it. He certainly wasn’t happy to see me.
“Let me carry it for you,” I said. “That looks awkward as hell, and you don’t want to drop it.” I had both hands on it. He was looking up into my face, and I was looking down into his, and I could see indecision on his part. He didn’t want me to help him, though. I could read that pretty clearly.
“Come on, Kevin. Let me have it. It’s silly to fight over it. We’ll drop it, and for what? Just let me take it wherever you want. Please?”
He didn’t want to, but I could see he didn’t know what else to do, and kids going through the line were looking at us. He didn’t have a wiseass answer for me, and I realized that with a strange sort of feeling of loss. He’d always had one before.
Reluctantly, he let go, and I had the tray.
“Where are you going to sit?” We’d walked to the outside door and were looking at the tables in the courtyard.
He looked around, and rather than answer, just started walking. I followed him outside. When he reached an empty table, he pulled out a chair and sat down. I put the tray in front of him. I then saw he was having trouble scooting the chair back up to the table. Doing that one-handed didn’t work very well. I moved behind him and tried to help. That got a reaction.
“Leave me alone!” he said, although he didn’t say it loudly, just intensely. “I don’t want you helping me. Don’t try to carry my tray tomorrow. Just leave me alone.”
I didn’t know what to say, or what to do. He looked pathetic, sitting alone by himself when most of the other tables had groups of kids sitting at them. He was by himself in an area full of noisy, chattering kids, his arm in a sling, his chair not aligned with the table properly. I wanted to help so badly, and he wouldn’t let me.
“Don’t you want to sit with your friends? Instead of here by yourself?”
“What’s it to you? Just get out of here!”
This was about the first real emotion I’d seen in him all day. But it wasn’t said the way he usually had spoken to me in the past. There definitely was no spark, no mischievousness, in his eyes. They were very flat and empty of any spirit other than anger.
“Kevin, I’m really sorry. Won’t you let me help? It would make things easier for you. And I’d like to. I feel bad about what happened.”
“No. I had… I… No. Just go away.” He looked at me, and I saw his momentary flash of anger fade from his eyes. Then he looked down again, not meeting my eyes at all. His voice became even smaller than before. He transformed right before me from angry to this, whatever it was. He seemed to have no spirit in him at all.
I had been expecting a noisy, bratty, offensive kid. Instead, I had this. The thought I had been the cause of this change really bothered me. I didn’t know what to do. I started to reach out to touch him, and he saw it and said, “Don’t!”
What could I do? Nothing. I stood there for a moment, feeling impotent, then simply said, “I’m sorry,” again and turned and went back to my own table.
I kept watching him, however. He’d gotten a plate of the mystery meat they were serving that day. It was tough. It needed to be cut with a knife. He tried cutting it with his knife without holding it in place, and it just kept sliding around on his plate. He gave up on that and stabbed in with his fork, then tried taking a bite of it and ended up with a chin full of gravy and no meat in his mouth. I stood up again, and he looked over at me and violently shook his head.
Then he tried to open his milk carton, couldn’t with one hand, dropped it onto his tray, and then just sat there, and I saw his shoulders slump.
I could stand it any longer, so got up and took my tray to the window, and left. Feeling like the biggest shit who ever lived.
◊ ◊
Dinner was pretty quiet that night. Both Dad and Mom tried to engage me in conversation, both wanted to know about all the contact I’d had with Kevin after we’d left Dad’s office, how often Kevin had paged me, how other kids had reacted to my running to help him, whether any of my fears were coming true, but I just didn’t want to talk. Maybe it was just a little bit the surly teenager in me, but it was more that I was simply in a rotten mood. I felt awful about the whole Kevin deal, all aspects of it, blaming myself, Kevin, my dad, just everything about it, and I simply didn’t feel like getting involved in a normal, happy family discussion. I was sulky and unresponsive, and eventually they both saw I was useless and just chatted with each other.
I picked at my meal, and finally just told them I wasn’t hungry and left the table. I went up and sulked in my room till it was time to head out for marching band practice. I realized I was feeling much differently from last night. Then, I’d been consumed with fears of how I’d look to everyone at school, that I’d become a laughingstock, that I’d lose any respect I’d managed to gain. I’d concentrated on how I’d again become something to jeer at and look down on, and I hadn’t been able to get that picture out of my head. That was last night. Tonight, I wasn’t thinking about that at all. I was instead thinking about a feisty, mouthy, cocky, undersized kid with a lot of balls who faced off fearlessly with anyone he felt was hassling him, a kid whom I’d unintentionally injured and in the process seemed to have knocked all the fight out of. What had been a happy-go-lucky, self-assured and combative kid, now appeared to be one who was alone, hopeless, and lost. And I’d done that. Me.
I really didn’t understand how my knocking him to the ground could have made such a profound difference in his personality, but the evidence that it had kept slapping me in the face. I couldn’t deny it, even if I didn’t really understand it.
What hurt was, I didn’t see what I could do to change any of this. I wanted to make amends, to help. Maybe this was just to soothe my conscience, but it felt like more than that to me. I’d never been able to understand my feelings about the kid. He’d been a nuisance, sure, and I’d been worried about what other kids would think if they saw him hanging with me and I wasn’t shooing him away. They might even think I liked him, liked him being around me. That wouldn’t be good at all. Freshmen and juniors didn’t normally have much truck with each other. Different worlds and all that.
So I’d been annoyed with him, but I’d also realized annoyance wasn’t the only thing I was feeling, that there was more to it than that. I’d had other feelings that I’d never allowed myself to analyze at all. It seemed dangerous to do that, somehow, though I wasn’t sure why. I just hadn’t let myself go there, but just thinking about thinking about it was scary. And I didn’t know why. Just that it was.
The whole situation had me in a funk. I hated that he was hurt, and I hated that his whole personality seemed to have changed. And that I was responsible.
It was time to go. It was still warm enough I didn’t need a jacket. September in Southern California is a very warm month. I just grabbed my clarinet, went downstairs, waved at my parents who were sitting in the living room, and went out the door. My mom said something, but I pretended not to hear and didn’t stop.
I could hear the usual blast of atonal cacophony as I approached the band room. I stopped and listened for a second or two, and couldn’t hold back on my smile. To me, the sound meant I was coming home. It might have been the best I’d felt all day. Yeah, I hated the idea of marching band, but I loved playing. Not in a marching band, though. There, music-making took second fiddle to marching and the colorful spectacle when the band was on the field. I cared about music, and playing, and resented that no one could tell the difference when we were playing in the key of F and I played either an E or an E-flat; no one could hear me at all. No one could even hear any of the woodwinds, really, other than the piccolo occasionally, as the percussion banging away full strength and brass blowing their brains and lips out so overwhelmed us. The other thing to get annoyed about was the whole concept that made playing in the band so rewarding, the communal aspects of it. The fun of trying to all play together with intonation and balance and empathetic listening and adjusting to everyone around us so as to make the sound cohesive and supportive—this was all lost on the football field.
Sorry about that. I get a little carried away when it comes to band.
I said hi to a few kids, waved at a few others, read the words Mr. Tollini had written on the board—today’s words were DA CAPO, SFORZANDO and TABLATURE, if you’re interested—then set my clarinet case on a table, opened it and began assembling the instrument. I’d just got the bell twisted onto the lower joint while sucking some moisture into my reed when Mr. Tollini approached me.
“Hey, Matt. Glad to see you. Could I talk to you a minute?”
“Sure, Mr. Tollini. Can I put my clarinet together while you do?”
“Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk about.” He looked at me and I thought he looked a little unsure of himself, which was confusing because he was never unsure of himself, and I stopped what I was doing, now holding the barrel in one hand, the mouthpiece in the other.
“Matt, remember when you told me one of the reasons for not joining the marching band was no one could hear you out there, so it didn’t make any sense to be there?”
“Yeah, and it’s still true. But I’ll play. I’ll make the best of it.”
“I know you will, but you’re a great musician, and it would make more sense if you could be heard. So I was thinking. You’re right, there isn’t much point in having a gifted clarinet player playing in a marching band where his sound just gets swallowed. But there are instruments that can be heard. I was wondering if you’d be willing to play one of those.”
I looked at him for a second, confused. Then I said, “But I don’t know how to play a brass instrument. I suppose I could play bass drum, but we’ve already got Ross doing that.”
“I know, but that’s not what I had in mind. What I’m thinking of, you could learn really fast. And people will be able to hear you. Hear you maybe better than anyone else in the band. Even the trumpet players, they’re all playing one of just three parts. What I’m thinking of, there’ll only be you. Matt, I’d like you to play the glockenspiel.”
I opened my eyes a little wider in surprise. Glockenspiel? I knew what it was, of course, one of those metal contraptions, sort of like a xylophone, but portable. The player wore a kind of harness and settled the main support rod of the glockenspiel in a cup that attached to the harness, a cup that rode down around the, uh, the pelvis. It was very much like the harnesses flag carriers wore, so the weight of the flag wasn’t borne entirely by the arms. The harness took the weight of the instrument, which the player then would steady with his left hand and play by hitting the metal bars with a mallet held in his right hand. The music would be mounted on a carrier attached to the side of the frame of the glockenspiel.
I knew what it was, but hadn’t ever played one. I said as much to Mr. Tollini.
“Matt, you told me you had a year of piano lessons.”
I had told him that in one of the conversations we’d had. And I had indeed done that. When I was six, my mother decided I should start piano, and so I did. She played piano and wanted me to. So I started. Most wind instruments, you aren’t supposed to start till you’re between 8 and 10, around those ages somewhere, because of something about the embouchure and face maturing enough at that age, and also the kid himself maturing enough so he could listen to the teacher explaining everything without losing focus. Kids started piano much earlier than that, sometimes as young as four. Starting at six wasn’t unusual at all. I’d had lessons for a year, till I was seven, but didn’t really like piano very much. I didn’t like the instrument and didn’t like the teacher, who treated me like I was a little kid. So I asked my mother if I could stop, and she said she wanted me involved in music, and if I didn’t really like the piano, I could quit, but she wanted me to take lessons on something else. She’d let me choose.
I’d chosen the clarinet. I’m not sure why, because I hadn’t been really sure what it was. Maybe I’d just heard the name and liked the sound of it. But we got one, and I’d taken to it immediately.
“I did take a year of piano, but I didn’t learn very much, and didn’t much like it. Why?”
“Because the glockenspiel is designed just like a piano keyboard, and if you understand the basics of that, if you’re familiar with it, and you can read music, which of course you do, you’ll be able to play glockenspiel well enough to march with us immediately. And we need one. You can hear the glockenspiel’s notes clearly, and with you playing it, we’ll hear the right notes, frequently up above all the rest of the music that’s being played. It would really help us, and your talent won’t be lost among all the other noises going on out there. Would you be willing to try it?”
I thought about it. I really didn’t like playing the clarinet on the field. I also didn’t like the idea of being in the limelight with something I wasn’t sure I could do very well, and playing the glockenspiel would certainly be doing that. But it was a musical challenge, and that interested me.
“Okay. I won’t promise to be any good, but I’ll give it a try.”
“Great! Why don’t you practice playing the part tonight? Go up there with the other percussionists,” he said, nodding at the back row of the risers. “The music should be on the stand there. Have fun. If you hit a few sour notes, don’t worry: it’s only marching band!”
He said that with a malicious grin on his face, and I looked at him hard. He was throwing my own comment back at me, or at least my own sentiment. Then I saw him trying to hold back his grin.
“Very funny,” I said, and couldn’t stop myself from laughing.
He grinned a full grin then, patted me on the back, and I climbed the risers to the top.
◊ ◊
There are few things I’m passionate about in life, and this year I’ve made it my goal to be even less passionate about everything whenever I can. My parents have been on me. My grades have been slipping. I had befriended both Cliff and Chris mostly because they were slackers, disinterested in anything, and spoke mostly in grunts. That seemed like a safer position to be in, for me, hanging with guys like that. No one paid us any attention because we were thought of as losers. That felt like one step up for me.
I’d purposely lost myself in the lower strata of school society, and was developing my disinterest in everything to a fine art. Everything except band. That was something for which I had kept my enthusiasm. Of course, that was just in my head, really, because I didn’t have band this semester. I wasn’t in it. Not now. Or, not till now. Band in the fall was marching band, up till the final few weeks of the term, and I didn’t belong. Because when I was playing, I wanted to play well, not march around in a fancy, frilly uniform in front of a bunch of football-watching fanatics who couldn’t care less about music and couldn’t hear the woodwinds at all.
So while I was trying to evince a lackadaisical attitude towards everything else in school, in the back of my mind, I was still looking forward to playing in the band again when Concert Band started late in the semester. That wasn’t something I could keep my current detached attitude about.
I loved playing clarinet. I’d started taking lessons when I was seven, and we even found a teacher who was willing to work with me although I was supposedly too young. I’d liked it immediately. Most kids find practicing their instrument an intrusion on their already busy days, busy including, of course, hanging with their friends or simply goofing off. Practicing was something that they found boring and difficult and that they didn’t want to do. I found myself, even at seven, looking forward to practicing; it was something I enjoyed, and I didn’t mind it at all. I practiced an hour a day, and didn’t gripe about it. My mother had told me, at the beginning, that if I was going to do this, I had to practice a half hour a day or there was no point in her paying for lessons. Within my first month with the instrument, I doubled the time. As a result, by the time I was in middle school and joined the band as a sixth grader, I could play. I’d been playing and taking lessons for five years by then; I could really play.
The band director was the math teacher and I think he was leading the band only because of the extra $500 a semester he received for doing so. He didn’t know squat about music or conducting or anything else that had to do with music. But he did seem to realize that I could play better than any of the other clarinetists, even the eighth graders, and he assigned me to the first chair position.
The guy sitting next to me was an eighth grader, about a foot taller than me, and unhappy some little kid had taken his place and would also be taking the few clarinet solos that were in the music we’d be playing. He was condescending to me, but not physically abusive, and the only time I saw him was in band. I decided early on that playing first chair was more important to me than his attitude, and I just ignored him. By the end of the year, he’d realized I could play the snot out of the instrument and he couldn’t, and we were almost sort of friends. Kids can do that.
When I reached high school, I found there were much better players in the band there than there had been in middle school, and the conductor, Mr. Tollini in his first year there, was much more serious about us sounding good than the math teacher had been. He was also able to inspire us to want to sound good. He made the band something it hadn’t been before, a symbol of excellence in that school, something all the kids could be proud of, and it became an honor to be part of it, something all the kids who played instruments could aspire to joining.
He told us all during our first meeting that he’d audition every player and then assign them seats. He also told us if we thought we could play better than anyone he assigned to a higher position in our section, we could challenge them for their seat. The challenge would consist of the two of us having a private showdown, each playing something he’d chosen from our assigned music, which he’d give us time to prepare, and then sight-reading something he’d give us at the time we competed against one another.
He assigned me the last chair in the first clarinet section, something I later learned was almost unheard of for a freshman. There were quite a few seniors in the band, and they were generally 17 or 18 years old, while I was a ripe old 14. They’d been playing in the band for three years already and were now entering their fourth year, whereas this was my first year in the group. So by putting me in the first section, I was already being placed ahead of several seniors.
Almost all the clarinetists—there were 16 of us in all—were surprised, and a few of them pissed. I could hear the grumbling. I hoped they were mad at Mr. Tollini, not me. I just took the chair he assigned me. It wasn’t my fault.
But I was upset, too. After the first rehearsal, I knew I could play better than the guy next to me, and probably the girl next to him, although I wasn’t sure because she didn’t play out enough that I could really hear her. Now I wasn’t very self-assured about most things, and I was a freshman, and I was brand new, but when it came to the clarinet, I guess I did have some cockiness about me. After that first rehearsal, I went up to Mr. Tollini and told him I wanted to challenge the two players right ahead of me, and then we’d see where we’d go from there. I really told him that.
He looked at me, and I couldn’t read much in his eyes, but I could read his surprise. I never made much noise, and people could easily ignore me. I wasn’t very big then, and small and quiet make you invisible in high school, usually. He might have thought it was strange to hear such a strong statement coming from such an unlikely source.
Anyway, he’d said anyone could challenge anyone for their seat, and if I wanted to challenge those two kids, I knew it was my right. He told me he’d set it up for a couple days later after school if no one had any conflicts. He also told me what piece in our folder he’d have me play, and showed me the section to have prepared. He said he’d contact the other two players and give them the same information.
The next day, in band, he told me it was all set, to come to the band room after school the following day with my clarinet after my last class and we’d have the challenge then. That day in band I got a rude stare from the boy sitting next to me and he wouldn’t speak to me at all, and the girl next to him didn’t look at me. It was uncomfortable. The next day, when I got to the room, both the other kids were there, already warming up. I put my clarinet together and did the same thing, running through some scales and arpeggios, doing a chromatic run or two to loosen up my fingers.
Mr. Tollini had me play first. I guess that was fair, letting the two older, established kids, hear what they had to play against. The music from the folder was easy. It was a passage from a somewhat simplified band arrangement of Pictures at an Exhibition. There were a couple really tricky places in that arrangement and a wicked solo full of grace notes for the solo clarinetist, but he’d assigned something that wasn’t really all that hard for us. I concentrated more on intonation and tone quality than notes as there wasn’t anything technically challenging about the passage. The sight-reading was something from a Persichetti piece. It was much more difficult. I think he wanted to see how we’d react to not getting whatever we were playing perfect as well as how we could do playing unpracticed music. I played it pretty well. I do a lot of sight-reading, playing stuff with my mother accompanying me on the piano, so I’ve had a lot of experience doing it and wasn’t intimidated at all. I was happy with how I played.
Neither of the other two kids played as well as I did. I was surprised that the girl played better than the boy. I hadn’t been able to hear her that well in band. Accordingly, I’d thought she was timid and probably was timid because she knew she couldn’t play well. Now I could hear her, and she was pretty good. Her tone wasn’t quite as round and centered as mine was, her intonation wasn’t as good in the high register as it could have been and she missed a couple of the sixteenth note runs in the Persichetti number, but overall I was impressed. I realized my assumptions about her just because she didn’t play out very much were presumptuous. The boy had more problems than she did.
When we were done, Mr. Tollini thanked us all and told us he’d let us know what he’d decided tomorrow before band. I went home happy; it as clear to me I’d be moved up two chairs tomorrow.
And that’s what happened. When everyone was walking into the band room the next day, he briefly spoke to the other two kids, telling them they’d each have to slide over one seat, and told me to sit where the girl had been sitting. I was happy, but knew well enough not to show a lot of excitement. I figured that might piss off the other two kids more than they probably already were, and I didn’t want to do that. I really wasn’t thinking about them, but somehow realized there was a social aspect to this as well as just me moving up in the section.
I was sitting next to the girl now, to her right, and it surprised me that she was friendly. She told me I’d played well, and I had deserved to move up. I wasn’t expecting that, and it made sitting there much easier. The boy wouldn’t look at me.
Of course, I wasn’t planning to sit in that seat long. At the end of rehearsal, I approached Mr. Tollini again and told him I wanted to challenge the next two kids now. He looked at me, then asked if I was sure.
“Yes, I listened to them while we were rehearsing today. I can play better than both of them.”
“They’re both seniors, you know.”
“Yeah, isn’t that neat?”
He didn’t reply for a moment. Then he told me I had the right to challenge, and if I wanted to, and he’d set it up, if I was sure. I confirmed that I wanted to. We played after school a couple nights later. And I won the challenges for their seats. Both of them.
This time it didn’t go quite as well for me, however. The first two kids I’d challenged had been fairly accepting about being beaten out of their positions by a freshman, the girl even gracious, the boy unhappy but that was all. The girl was a sophomore, the boy a junior. The two boys I beat out this time were both seniors, and neither liked giving up their seats to me. I was clearly a better player than either, but that didn’t seem to mean anything to them. These guys both let me know right away that they didn’t like me at all.
If I’d say something to them in rehearsal, they’d either ignore me, or say something really sarcastic back. The guy that used to sit next to the first chair player was named Don Blascomb, and Don was evidently good friends with Alan Hodge, the concertmaster, which was what Mr. Tollini called the first chair player, even though he was a clarinet player and not a violinist. After the challenge, I’d moved to the seat next to Alan’s and Don was sitting next to me, sandwiching me between them. Don would talk to Alan and he’d do so by talking right through me, acting as if I wasn’t there. That was pretty easy because I was much shorter than either of them and they could look at and speak to each other right over my head. When Don would occasionally look at me, it was with a great deal of malice. He didn’t like me, he didn’t like me sitting in what he considered to be his seat, and he didn’t mind if the entire world knew it. If there was ever unfriendliness in someone’s glare, it was there in his at those times. He made it real clear that me bumping him from his seat was not something he accepted, not something he liked, and that in my doing so, I’d made an enemy.
Which bothered me a little, but not too much. Seniors and freshmen don’t intermix much, and band rehearsals were the only place I saw these guys. I was excited, finding I could play better than a bunch of seniors, and that’s what I was focusing on.
It was early the next week when I approached Mr. Tollini again.
“Mr. Tollini, I want to challenge Alan.”
“You want to challenge Alan?”
“Yeah. He’s a good player, but I think I’m better.”
“Let’s go into my office to talk about this, Matt.”
He led me to his office, a very small room, just large enough for his tiny desk, his chair, some filing cabinets and a folding chair. I sat in the folding chair, he sat at his desk.
“Okay Matt, we need to discuss this. In the first place, it’s much more polite to say you’re challenging for the chair, or in fact that you’re actually challenging the chair, instead of saying you’re challenging the player. It sounds better, it’s not as confrontational. Whether you win or lose the challenge, you still have to deal with the people you’re competing with, and not thinking about challenging them so much as you’re challenging the position helps make it not so personal. You understand that?” I nodded. He continued, “Now, for my ‘in the second place.’ “
“Matt, you’re an awfully good clarinet player. The firsts sound much stronger this year than last, and I think it’s because of you. Part of the reason is because you’re in the first section, and because you being there is causing other players to practice more. So by just adding one really strong player, we’ve gained a lot. You’ve made a big difference. I’m delighted we have you, and think having you in the band for four years is going to be a major step forward for us. You’re going to make the entire band better.”
He paused then, and it looked to me like he was trying to find what words he wanted to say next. He studied me, and I had a sudden flash of understanding. What I realized was, he was trying to decide just what kind of a kid I was.
Eventually, he decided what he needed to decide, and continued. “The thing is, Matt, Alan is a good player, good enough to play the parts, good enough to play the solos. He’s well liked by most of the kids. And this is his fourth year in the band.”
He stopped there for a moment, keeping his eyes on me. I could tell he wanted me to really hear what he was saying, and to think about it. I was a freshman. I had no idea why anything he was saying was important. But I could clearly see he thought it was, and he wanted me to hear it. I waited for him to continue.
He kept looking at me, making sure he had my complete attention, then resumed his speech. “Matt, he might have been good enough to challenge the senior who was our concertmaster last year. He didn’t. He sat next to him all year. That boy was a senior, and he’d waited three years for that chair. Alan might have been able to take it away from him, but he didn’t. You might say that he waited his turn. This is his fourth year in the band, he moved to higher seats each year, and then, now, he’s moved to the top spot in the clarinet section, really the top spot, the most important single position, in the entire band.
“Alan’s a good person. And it’s easy to feel he’s earned his chance to be concertmaster. He’s serious about the music, he’s a good section leader, helping with discipline in the section, helping players when they have problems playing their parts, working with them individually, helping smooth out any personality conflicts. He also works with me when I need a hand, sorting music, stuffing it in folders, helping rearrange the room for small ensembles, stuff like that.
“The thing is, Matt, you’re an exceptional player. I’ve never met a boy your age that plays the clarinet so well. I have little doubt that if you challenge Alan, you’ll play better, you’ll sound better, and you’ll definitely sight-read better. He has to work hard to play all the assigned music as well as he does. Sight-reading isn’t his thing.
“So you’d probably win the challenge. And you’d move up to the concertmaster chair. You, a freshman, playing first chair within a couple weeks of joining the band. Quite an accomplishment. And Alan, who’s paid his dues, who’s been with us four years instead of two weeks, who might have had that chair last year if he hadn’t sacrificed himself for the kid who did have it, will lose the spot he’s been looking forward to and working hard to get all this time, for the last three years in fact.”
I could see what he wanted, now. I wasn’t sure how to think about it. But it was clear to me that I had been thinking about the glory I’d feel when getting the first chair position, about everyone knowing I had got it, that I was the best clarinet player in the school, that I would be a big man in school because of that. I hadn’t thought about anything but all those I’s.
Mr. Tollini had paused again, and I think he could see enlightenment in my eyes. He smiled a little, patted me on the knee, and said, “Matt, you have the right to challenge Alan’s chair. Knowing Alan as I do, he wouldn’t even be upset about it. He’d handle it a lot better than Don and Kyle have. But I’d like you to take a day or two to think about it. You have three more years after this one to have and hold that chair. This is the only shot Alan has at it, and he’s worked his tail off to get it. Will you do that, just stop and think about it awhile? Sit next to him and get a feel for the band, how things work, who the kids are? You’re going to be concertmaster soon. I can’t see anyone coming along and taking that away from you, as long as you keep playing as well as you do now, and I have the feeling you’ll probably even get better. But getting to know what’s what and who’s who is important, too.
“Getting to learn how to do things, watching how Alan does them, could really help you. Not everyone can instinctively be a leader. It is a special skill, but one I’m sure you’ll be able to learn. If you do learn how it’s done before that becomes your role, you’ll do a lot better at it. It’ll make your job as concertmaster more comfortable, and you’ll be able to more easily do the things that are necessary if you see them modeled for you by someone who’s good at it and respected. For a freshman to handle those responsibilities would be quite a feat. It’s much harder if some of the kids don’t accept you very well.”
That startled me. I sat a little straighter in my chair, then asked him, “What do you mean, don’t accept me?”
“Matt, you’re a freshman. Most freshmen sit in the back rows of their sections, usually the 3rd clarinet section, a few in the 2nds, and watch what’s going on, act a little scared, play softly or not at all in the tricky spots, and we never really hear from them for a couple years, till they’re juniors. Other kids expect that. Now here you are, a freshman, ready to jump to the most prestigious position in the band. Some kids are going to resent that. Some of the seniors, let’s say ones playing third clarinet, are going to have a problem with you walking back to their row and telling them they need to play out more in the rondo and maybe a little better in tune, and that they’re playing flat. Or asking them what fingering they’re using two measures after letter D in the Gordon Jacob piece, and then showing them an alternate fingering to use to play the B-flat in the upper register, how to use the first finger of each hand instead of the side key because it makes the transition to the E that follows it much easier. And if you’re going to be an effective concertmaster, you need to be able to do those things. And the other kids have to be willing to listen to you.
“Some of Alan’s friends, or just kids who know him and admire the way he handles himself, might not be real happy, either, and their resentment might not be good for the band.
“And you know what? You have a great opportunity right now, sitting next to him in second chair. You can watch Alan do all his concertmaster chores. He’s good at it. He does it all so naturally that no one gets upset. They even seem to appreciate it, because he does it in a way that they know he’s helping them, not getting on their cases. He learned how to do that by watching his predecessor. And you can do the same thing. That’s what I meant about having the job modeled for you.”
He looked at me expectantly. I thought for a moment. It was easy to understand what he was saying. I really wanted that first chair, but I hadn’t realized what came with it, and I realized now that maybe I’d wanted it for the wrong reasons. I’d already managed to piss off some of the band members. Being section head would give me a lot more opportunities to do even more of that. I could see where that would make me really unpopular.
Maybe I did need to slow down a little.
“Mr. Tollini, maybe I’ll wait some before challenging Alan.”
A big smile lit up his face. He stood up, and I did too. He dropped an arm around my shoulders as we left the office, walking back into the band room and towards the outer door.
“Matt, you’re going to make a great concertmaster. And now I see you’re going to make a great member of this band, too, which is also very important, both for us and for you. Thanks. I’m very proud of you right now. See you tomorrow.”
I played second chair first clarinet all year. Assistant concertmaster. I became concertmaster at the beginning of my sophomore year. No kid had ever been concertmaster as a sophomore before. There’d only been a very few juniors who’d accomplished that. I felt good about it. And Mr. Tollini let me know how proud he was of me for waiting. At the end of that first year, after our last rehearsal right before our last concert, Alan stopped me as I was packing up my clarinet.
He shook my hand, wished me luck next year, and said, “Matt, thanks for letting me have this year. It meant a lot to me.” He looked me in the eye when he said that. We spoke some more. We’d become sort of friends over the year, not close because he was a senior and I was a freshman, but we were sort of friends. We were very comfortable together and respected each other. I respected him a lot. I watched how he treated people, and how they responded to him, and hoped I had some of what he had when I was a senior.
It made me really happy, what he said to me that day, and I felt good, walking home afterwards.