DAY 149

My oldest daughter favors my husband in that she is tidy and likes things orderly and neat. Yesterday her “new to her” band book arrived via post.  It is in fine shape but had a few pencil marks she spent some time obsessively erasing before she deemed it acceptable.

At this point she turned to me and said, “Everyone else has a new clean book.”  I kind of shrugged and said it looked pretty good to me. She then gave me the defiant you-are-clearly-an-idiot–look, known to parents the world over and said, “Well my case is old.”

I should probably back up at this point and mention this is our first year for band.  Last year she attended the meeting  to choose an instrument.  She went with the intention of choosing the violin.

After about 37 hours of waiting in line to TRY THEM ALL.  She chose—the trumpet.  While it surprised me, it was actually a lucky choice because I have a friend whose son had a brief Jr. High affair with the horn and had a previously “wailed on” one we could buy.* On a related note, I don’t know if you have ever been around a crowd of 9-year old trumpet players but they sound like a flock of geese yodeling.

The trumpet is fine, but the case is scuffed.  So when Kayla complained about the case, I tried to make it into some larger teaching moment and explain that no one really cared what her trumpet case looked like and it was what was on the inside that was important, etc…

Then she threw me the proverbial curve ball. She said, “Even the office ladies think it’s old.”

Wait…What?

She went on to say that a couple of days prior she had to retrieve the forgotten instrument from the front desk, after she rounded the corner, the school secretary said, “that’s an old one.”

My daughter took it personally.

So my first reaction was to get all bowed up and angry.  I mean, are you kidding me?  It does not help my Simple Year project when school employees are sabotaging me.  But, then I gave it some thought.  I know the woman in question and she is really nice and great with the kids.  In all fairness, it is old and she was probably just making an offhand comment.  One I could have very well made myself.

So, I smoothed my feathers and asked her if she would like it better with contact paper on it.  After I explained what contact paper was, she said, “What about stickers?”

WHAT ABOUT STICKERS?

Brilliant, We had all kinds of stickers we could scrounge up from in our various art supply stashes.

So we went from this:

Before

To this:

After

And now all is right with my future jazz headliner.

*They also have a rental program for school band instruments which is a good option as well.  It just worked out better for us to do this.