The Music Lesson

  Note: This one is for you, Aunt Liz. Back by popular demand, a Timmy Fleck story.

I had an appointment with my pain management doctor yesterday. I had been dreading that appointment for weeks. I told my husband that I am tired of going to doctor’s and he said that he completely understood why. It’s tough to go to appointments, I have to drive myself which means no pain meds until after I get home. Without my pain meds I am miserable and my body jerks and shakes because I can’t take my Flexiril either. Flexiril stops the majority of my muscle cramps and helps me with the shaking. So my appointment was not something I was looking forward to.

That got me thinking, there were some things I always dreaded, like music lessons in grade school.

Growing up in Ashland was not all fun and games, after all, we did have to go to school for 9 months a year. And not everything at school was fun. Beginning in the first grade, I learned to dread Tuesdays. On Tuesdays the music teacher Mrs. Rehnquist came to teach us for an hour. She visited once a week and she traveled to all 4 grade schools in Ashland.

Mrs. Rehnquist was a large lady, at least she seemed large to me when I was 6 years old. She was loud, and expected all of us to be loud too. She was the first teacher that began telling us to “sing together” I’m sorry she said it more like “SING TOGETHER!!!! OR ELSE!!!” We were terrified.

I’m not sure that in first grade any of us knew how to sing together or even what we were doing wrong. We were just learning how to read, so it’s not like we had music books or anything.

But there she was every Tuesday with her pitch pipe. It was like a round harmonica and she would play a note and then we were all supposed to sing that note. She made us do the scale all the time. Do, re, mi, there was no Eskimo song or Carmelita in First Grade. We mostly sang scales and apparently we weren’t very good at it.

Mrs. Rehnquist would play her pitch pipe and then walk back and forth along the rows of desks trying to pick out who was not singing the way she wanted us to. And that’s when it happened, the medieval torture of music lessons.

If you did not sing it correctly, she made you stand up and then she put one hand on your lower back and one hand on your belly and then when you sang, she squeezed you like a vice to make you sing higher. All the while she was making you sing “like a cat in the attic, TOOT TOOT TUESDAY!!!!” Sing “TOOT< TOOT< TUESDAY!!!”

I’m not kidding. Every Tuesday some poor kid was going to get the beJesus squeezed out of him or her. And it wasn’t just one kid either, it was a lot of kids. I don’t think I ever got squeezed, I was so afraid of her I was singing at the top of my lungs. But can you blame me?? Sing loud or get squeezed, which would you choose?

And of course, there was always one kid in class that seemed to get it worse than anyone else and I’m afraid that person was Timmy Fleck. Timmy Fleck and his family lived in our neighborhood. They were on Second street and twelfth avenue. They had a lot of kids in their family and all of them had bright blue eyes, were covered in freckles and each had a shock of red hair. Timmy wasn’t a bad kid and not a trouble maker, but he did seem to get himself into trouble during music class more than anyone else.

Normally, he would sing with a deeper voice and of course, Mrs. Rehnquist wouldn’t allow that!! After all, he wasn’t going through puberty. He was singing that low as a joke and there was only one thing for her to do. Every Tuesday, Timmy got squeezed and squeezed until he finally squeaked out “TOOT TOOT TUESDAY”. The harder she squeezed, the more determined Timmy was not to sing like “ a cat in the attic” - which to this day doesn’t really make sense. A cat with it’s tail stuck under a rocking chair is more the noise she was looking for, but I was not going to offer my opinion. The more difficult Timmy was, the harder she squeezed until she was very red in the face and starting to sweat. Which was exactly what Timmy was hoping for. Nothing made him happier than completely frustrating an adult.

That music class was enough to straighten out any one who thought they would be the class clown. Except Timmy of course.

While the rest of us all cowered in our little desks, Timmy Fleck took his stand for a little while at least.. He got squeezed so hard, I thought it would make him grow taller, but by the time we were in Sixth grade, she was still squeezing him and he wasn’t any taller, maybe that stunted his growth or something.

So there we were, receiving our torture and a good bawling out by Mrs. Rehnquist each week. Our teacher would leave the classroom and Mrs. Rehnquist would make us miserable by singing songs we didn’t like or doing scales. No matter what we did, she yelled at us.

Until one day when I was in the Sixth Grade.

We were practicing for the Spring Sing. I think we were learning America The Beautiful. We were singing the best that we could, we had gotten to be a little more mature and we were really trying. But even our best effort was met with anger from Mrs. Rehnquist. Finally someone complained to our teacher, Mrs. Lamoreaux. Lamoreaux is my maiden name and Mrs. Lamoreaux was my great aunt. I really liked having her for a teacher, she was a really good person. She and my Uncle Bozo, lived just outside of Washburn, not very far from Gramma Al and Grampa Jack.

Mrs. Lamoreaux decided to stay in the room the next week when Mrs. Rehnquist visited and after a while, she began to get very angry. At the conclusion of our music lesson, Mrs. Lamoreaux called Mrs. Rehnquist out of the room to talk to her in the hall. Now the thing about the hallway was that it opened to the doors of 2 sixth grade classrooms and 2 fifth grade class rooms. All of those rooms were full of children and with those big high ceilings, the noise from their conversation really echoed.

Mrs. Lamoreaux told Mrs. Rehnquist that if she ever spoke to us in that manner ever again, she was going to report her. And that was just the first sentence. Mrs. Lamoreaux, yelled at her and made it clear that she was not kidding, this was serious. She said we were all singing just fine and that we were not bad kids or lazy kids or stupid. Those are just some of the things she called us.

I can remember sitting in my desk with my mouth hanging open. I don’t remember anyone before or since who stood up to Mrs. Rehnquist.

After that, Tuesdays were very different. No one got squeezed or yelled at and we started getting student teachers for music class. They were letting us sing Top 40 songs. I can remember singing “Rainy Days and Mondays”. The student teacher even let us listen to records, her records not the educational ones. We were very happy.

As for my doctor’s appointment? Yes, I dreaded it but it was not bad at all. There were no big changes in my condition and he’s pleased with my overall level of activity. No surgery is looming for me this time and no big changes in my medication. It all went very smoothly and as usual he was professional, friendly and really listened to me. I love it when doctors treat you like a person and not a diagnosis.

I don’t know what I was so worried about anyway. I’ve had dozens of doctor’s appointments since my back surgery and none of them squeezed me or made me sing “TOOT< TOOT< TUESDAY.

Have a great weekend everyone.

TOOT< TOOT< TOOT