The Trumpet and Other Bungles

Cheryl the musical monkey
performed on Easter Sunday.
She donned a pale wig
and danced a fair jig.
Twas' luck she didn't sound
like a donkey.

I had a blast Easter Sunday 2009. I played the trumpet for the opening hymn and the postlude, sat on the organ bench for the other hymns and sang in the choir at the last minute request of friend and pastor Rev. Dottie Dumas. I wasn’t ‘timbre pure’ on the instrument, but the congregation didn’t notice or they didn’t care. No-one threw a tomato. As a joke I slipped myself a note in the trumpet case many years ago. It reads, “Dear Stupid, remember that you only open this case once a year and you’re not getting any younger. You’re not 25 anymore, so don’t embarrass yourself and just close the case. We both know you’re not going to practice more than once before you play your annual humiliation performance.”

Fool that I am, I trudge right on and somehow pull it off each year - enough to please little crowds in country churches that only have junior high French horn players with which to compare me. If you have never heard a beginning French-hornist, just read my personal story: I fell in love with the trumpet the first time I heard it played on the filmstrip we saw in fifth grade music class. However, my family couldn’t afford to purchase an instrument, so the band director gave me the option of a school-issued French horn. The old horn, with its ancient wooden case mentioned in one of my earlier blogs, weighed more than I did, but I was happy I was in band and enthusiastically blared my inaugural notes in my bedroom. My parents, not wanting to squelch my fervor for learning, suggested I go to the back yard because it was cooler, there was better ventilation for my breathing, the world was my stage. Ah, you're following where this is going, aren't you? Once in the back yard armed with a rickety music stand, I proceeded to polish the C scale. The neighbors promptly called the county agent to report that someone’s cow was in the throws of death somewhere on the street behind them.

The fact that I know I am not perfect ~
Folks, I know my poetry is not perfect. I know my writing is not perfect. I simply want it to be entertaining, enlightening, a way to get my thoughts out to those who may be interested. I have no grand illusions about myself. I am a worker bee who has many hats and I enjoy wearing them. I consider myself to be darned good at many of my skills and am willing to continue to learn on others. As is evident here, one of those chapeaus is writing, and many others that land on my head spin around in the music world, including singing.

For those of you who do not know it, my singing voice and my speaking voice are two different creatures. My friend, Sue, once told someone I had the voice of Julie Andrews. Well, there went Sue’s credibility as a music critic. I'd only rate it as a better than average voice. But, and here is a big but, much like the Buick parked on my back porch if you get my drift, my speaking voice is something I cringe in horror when I hear it recorded. I marvel at the monster I created when I adopted the Southeast Texas Twang more than 30 years ago.

You know how you can peg a new college student? You listen to their conversation. They use every erudite word they are newly learning. They wax poetic and expound with pleonasms - that’s an almost archaic word for big, flowery, wordy, redundant, descriptive phrases. (i.e. that last sentence.) I was much like those college kids early in life. As I've mentioned before, I had a love affair with words and was an avid reader. Give me expeditious over quick, dilatory over slow and periwinkle over some blue color. In high school, I was in what was titled Premium English classes. By my senior year, I learned that I could be ‘sick’ the day of the question exam and breeze through the make-up exam because the teachers PUNISHED us by making it an essay style test. Yes, I can say it - B.S. was my official degree in high school! I made straight A’s because I could buffalo my way through an essay with bigger words than some of the teachers knew. However, this affection for words became an affliction in my personal life.

I married right out of high school and put college off for a while. My newly acquired family was a household where English was a second language. I was told they felt like I was talking down to them, talking over their heads, etc. I was baffled, because that was not my intent. I was just me being me. In order to make peace with the family I took on the sounds of Southeast Texas and trimmed down my vocabulary. My parents were appalled. What started out as a contrived mannerism became ingrained in my nature as the years passed.

If you are not prepared for my speaking voice, you will read my literary art and be charmed, then you’ll get socked between the eyes with the sounds emitting from my mouth. Not kidding. Pick up the phone and you will hear one of Southeast Texas’ shining examples of an illiterate backwoods yahoo. The words on the page come from my brain but there is a short circuit between brain and voice box. The voice in my head is not the one I hear on the recorder. I can prove how dreadful my voice is by repeating something I overheard at a recent district meeting. The scene: I am in a crowded narthex of a large church directing folks to their destination and informing them about what supplies they needed to take with them. Out of that crowd I heard, “There goes that Cheryl voice. She’s here somewhere.”
Sigh
and
Drat

Fun with Words ~
In one of her emails the other day, friend Gwen wrote the remark that my writing continued to ‘suck her in.’ She noted that suck was her lofty word for the day and said she wished she had my talent. I have to chuckle at her reference to the talent because she is a talented artist and designer for some graphics arts type of company and is building a web site for a business full of links and screens and Html editing. I would be doing good to clamp two leggos together, and, for all I know, Html stands for hot tamales me likey. I fully understood Gwen’s intent and use of the word “suck” but, knowing me, you can guess that my mind did one of those turns to the south.

From the Cheryl Earles Unabridged Unabashed Unashamed Dictionary:
Suckustrated - What one becomes when she is the trapped in the public restroom stall with panties at her knees, left elbow clamped to her side trying to hold dress or coat up away from the toilet seat and one-handedly trying to start the brand new roll of toilet paper in the commercial dispenser just barely within reach.
Sucklets - The 327 useless bits of toilet paper one ends up with after starting the new roll of toilet paper in the public restroom while your panties are at your knees and your left arm is clamped against your body holding the dress/coat up away from the toilet seat.

Yeah, I went there.

Back to the Trumpet and Other Bungles ~
I pull no punches about my personality. I am proud of the fact that I am a Christian believer. I am not a holier than thou type of person. I accept people for who they are and enjoy them. I am not afraid to sing for anyone who will listen. I gladly play my instruments any time I am asked. I have no illusions that I am the best musician on the planet. I just want to serve. While I am intelligent, I take myself at face value. My writing is personal, so the structure won’t always be perfect. I liken myself to be much like the Texas woman who was a delegate at a women’s convention in New York. The Texas gal walked up to a delegate from one of the northern states and said, “Hi. Where yuh frum?” The other woman snootily replied, “I am frahm where we do not end our sen-ten-ces with a pre-po-si-tion.” The Texas gal didn’t bat an eyelash and said, “So, where yuh frum, bitch?”

No matter if you have marvelous writing talent, artistic abilities or you’re just a good and decent person - we all have things to offer each other and the world. I have friends with no formal education, but they are chock full of natural talent. I have associates who have no artistic talent, but they are the best people to be around and would do anything for you if asked. My sister does not hold some high-class career position, but she can decorate your house like an interior design magazine, and she raised two amazing and downright funny daughters. (And, yes, in Texas we raise our children like we raise chickens. Almost changed it to reared, but . . ) My brother is not a scholarly man, but if you are twelve miles out in the Gulf of Mexico in a boat with an engine that has died, give Steve a bobby pin and a piece of bubble gum and he’ll fix it and get you home to safety. My friend, Deb, has more education than I can shake a stick at, but she is as grounded a person as you'll ever find. While she is educating the doctors who will be our future physicians, she maintains an attitude I wish she could rub off on some of those who wear their placement in the world and their education like a cloak of glory as they look down upon the rest of us slugs. Deb and I can go for months, even years, without contact, and it is as if time does not exist when we get together. We have an 'intuneness' about our relationship that negates time factors. My best friend, Sue, is my opposite in personality and style. I’m Suzy Opera and she’s Country and Rock ‘n’ Roll. Sue raised a wonderful son, and she was always there when I needed her. She was practically my daughter’s other mother. One of our shared traits is that we are foodies. We love to try new foods in restaurants and break down the ingredients so we can make the dishes at home. You can easily see that I am surrounded by people delightfully different from me and different from each other, yet they all contribute to the make-up of my life and my personality.

Whether you can do one thing or many things, you should do something before your opportunities in this world pass you by. Throw some prepositions on the ends of your sentences and say ya’ll every now and then. Mix those tenses. Have fun and be comfortable with yourself. Just don’t record my voice and play it back to me.