Strings Night

By Chris
Last night was "Strings Night" at Nick's school. All the kids who will be starting orchestra for the first time attend with a parent for an orientation. I went with Nick . . . Teresa chose dishes and dinner clean-up, I got Strings Night. I don't like these kinds of meetings. I don't know why kids' schools roll-out the same seats for adults as they use for children. Teacher conference . . . have a seat in this little teeny desk and talk to me with your knees sprawled over the place. String night in the cafeteria . . . have a seat at this comfy cafeteria table with a too-small round spinning disk as a seat, with no back. The same kind I sat at in that same cafeteria. Can't we afford just a few "grown ups" chairs for our schools. I bet parents would come more often!

Anyway, it was a mercifully short meeting. And Nick really is pretty excited about this. I think music will be a much bigger hit with him than soccer and other stuff that he ended up not liking. He chose the cello as his instrument. That's the biggest one you can play at his age. It looks bigger than him. We got to look at one in its carrying case. I would have avoided something big like that to carry to school at all costs. Not Nick. He was truly giddy leaving the school, thinking about getting that cello and learning how to play it. He even talked about how neat it would be to perform something with his violin-playing sister. I'm pretty sure this activity will be high on her agenda . . . fiddling with her little brother. I told him that we would rent one this year . . . to make sure he liked it. I told him he may want to switch to the band next year when that becomes an option. He said he would rather do orchestra-type music. And he means it. His radio station of choice is 90.3 . . . which plays mostly instrumental, classical-type music . . . with lots of strings music.