June 2007

Earl and I made what is becoming a somewhat yearly trek to my alma mater for the annual “Alumni Banquet”. This gathering is a tradition at my high school; alumni gather for a banquet and typical assembly afterwards, where we honor the current graduates and hand out almost $10,000 in scholarships. Tonight’s banquet was the 118th. The oldest alumni in attendance had graduated in 1933.

My father is currently the president of the Alumni Association. This is his first year in the role. He’s going to do it for one more year and he hinted that I should take over the duties after he’s through. Apparently no one else wants the job.

I did take the opportunity to stand up and make an announcement about my efforts getting the Alumni Marching Band together for the parade in August. It’s coming together slowly but surely. Several people are excited about the venture, so I’m glad there’s some interest out there.

I had the opportunity to visit with one of my favorite teachers from high school. Miss Chontosh (though that’s not her name anymore) joined the faculty as an 8th grade math teacher when I was in 8th grade. Today she’s the department head for the math department. I told her about my current intermediate algebra challenges in college and she told me I’d do fine. I also snuck a peek in the gymansium for the first time since graduating in 1986. It looks the same aside from a paint job or four.

It was good to walk through the old halls and reminisce a little bit.

It’s been a year and a half since we welcomed my grandmother’s piano into our home. Even though the piano sits proudly in our front room, the “formal” living room, and is rightfully our piano, in my mind it shall always be my grandmother’s piano. I believe my grandfather bought it for her new back in 1949. When I sit on the bench, I can still smell the scent inherent to the instrument. I can still hear my grandmother playing her favorite song, “My Melody of Love”, made famous by Bobby Vinton.

I have played the piano on very few occasions since it’s come into our home. It didn’t survive the transport as well as I had hoped; several keys ended up in the “down” position and it hadn’t been tuned in at least two decades. But the keys that worked sounded strong and overall the piano is in otherwise great shape, so Earl and I decided it deserved a little TLC.

The kind man from Stage Music made two visits this week. On Tuesday morning he spent two hours assessing what needed to be done and he also brought the piano back to pitch (it was considerably flat). It turns out that there had been quite the family of mice living in the piano at one time, and they had snacked on the felt pads that raise the keys to their proper position. So Mr. Stage Music came back today and replaced all the felt and tweaked the pitch to perfection. To test the piano, Mr. Stage Music played a melody of lounge favorites. I noticed that he gave the piano the firm touch that it requires to make beautiful music. I’ve always been rather timid when playing this piano. This was a result of my playing the piano when I was in elementary school. I was having a loud, boisterous, joyful time with my sister, when grandpa came over and in his stern, rather bull-hornish voice proclaimed, “Do you know what refrain means?” We suspected it meant “stop and move your fingers”, as the lid to the keys was brought to a close.

We used a timid touch when we played the piano after that encounter. Thank goodness Mom and Dad babysat a piano for 20 years so that we had something to bang on.

So now my grandmother’s piano is back in her beautiful glory. I’ve never had an official piano lesson (thank god… we won’t mention the town minister that gave piano lessons only to ‘special young boys’), aside from the piano classes I didn’t finish at SUNY Fredonia. But I can plunk out a few tunes like a drunken fool from time to time, even though I can’t separate my left hand from my right hand and I don’t use the correct fingerings. See if you can identify the two songs I’m trying to play here.

It’s never good to see “You have one voicemail” on the cell phone after math class. Those who would call me know that I’m in school and would usually call me after school, plus I don’t think there’s that many people that would call me anyway, so seeing that I received a voicemail while I was sitting in class gave me an eerie feeling.

It was Earl. He fell asleep while driving on the Thruway today, with the cruise control on, and was awakened by the sound of his car sideswiping a guardrail at 72 MPH.

He’s not hurt and the car has an interesting pattern scraped down the entire length of it but it’s perfectly driveable. It just looks a little ghetto or white trashy right now.

My partner never gets enough sleep and he didn’t eat breakfast this morning. Instead of scolding him, well, maybe I scolded him just a little bit once I knew he was o.k., I told him that I’ll be joining him for a bowl of Cheerios and a glass of juice every morning.

I’ll even be chipper when I do it. Anything to avoid voicemail messages like that.