Difficulties with Gratefulness

“I played trombone in the 6th grade. My parents had got me a trombone and all through 6th grade I played. Over the summer I had been practicing pretty much every day andI was really excited about going into 7th grade and being in band, excited to play the trombone.

It was about three weeks before the start of the school year for 7th grade and I was practicing trombone. I got a knock on the door. I went and answered it holding my trombone in my hand. I opened the door and it’s a gentleman from the Music Connection. He had long, shoulder-length hair and he had a big ol’ broom mustache. He said, ‘Hi. I’m Bill from the Music Connection. I’m here because your parents haven’t made any payments on the trombone. And I need to repossess it.’

He points at it and he says, ‘Is that it?’ I look in my hand and I ask, ‘What…what do you mean? What’s going on? Yeeesss…this is it.’ He asks, ‘Is that the case?’ ‘Yeah, that’s the case.’ He says, ‘Well, pack it up. I need to take it.’ I didn’t know what to do, so I packed it up and gave it to him. As he’s walking away, I shouted after him, ‘What am I going to play?’ And the guy turns over his shoulder and shrugs his shoulders and says, ‘I dunno.’ Then he walks away.

So when my mom gets home that night, I told her what had happened, that the trombone had been taken. She said, ‘Well, what did you tell him when you answered the door?’ And I replied, ‘Well, he asked for the trombone.’ She said, ‘Well, why didn’t you lie to him and say that it wasn’t there?’ I was literally holding it in my hand, there was nothing I could say or do.

I had to wipe the sweat from my brow and go on with my day and wonder how this was going to resolve itself the next day.

Three weeks goes by and classes start. I go to band class and I don’t have my instrument. Nobody had talked to my band teacher. Nobody had said anything like, ‘Hey, by the way, this kid doesn’t have a trombone any more.’ And I didn’t know what to say. I got to class and thankfully the first day nobody was expected to have their instruments. I had to wipe the sweat from my brow and go on with my day and wonder how this was going to resolve itself the next day.

I go in and I still don’t have a trombone, obviously, so everybody else pulls out their instruments. The band instructor looks around and asks, ‘Ah, you – where is your instrument?’ I said, ‘Oh, I forgot it at home.’ So the next day, same story. Then it was the weekend (we had started before Labor Day that year, so it was a long weekend), and I was hoping, ‘Yeah, I can figure something out.’

I talked to my parents and they said, ‘I assumed that the school had an instrument you can use.’ ‘I don’t know,’ I guess is what I said, ‘Because I didn’t ask.’ So then Tuesday comes around and we’re back in class. Finally my band instructor pulls me aside and says, ‘Hey, what’s going on? You keep forgetting your instrument.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t actually have one anymore. It got taken away.’

That day she calls my parents and talks to them. I come in the next day and there’s an announcement for me to go to the band room, so I go to the band room. The band instructor has gone and rented out an instrument for me. Which was, you know, fantastic. I open it up and it is the dingiest, crappiest, junk trombone that I have ever seen in my life.

So it was super dinged up, super dented, ugly as sin.

It was literally like somebody took it up to the top of the stairs and was like, ‘I don’t want to play trombone anymore,’ and threw it down the stairs. And then brought it back up and threw it down the stairs repeatedly. So it was super dinged up, super dented, ugly as sin. I know now that I should have been appreciative for it, but at the time I was thinking, ‘I gotta use this in front of all these people who are using these brand-new, beautiful instruments.

I bring it into band that day and I sit down. The girl sitting next to me says, ‘Oh! You finally remembered to bring your trombone!’ And she pulls out hers and it’s just gorgeous, silver, brand-new. And I pull mine out and she’s like, ‘Oh…that’s your trombone, huh?’ It’s just…so weird.

I end up finishing the whole year. At the end of the year I wanted to do marching band that summer. The band instructor came up to me and said, ‘Hey, I can’t keep renting this for you.’ I asked, ‘Is there any way I can be in marching band?’ She said, ‘Well, you’ll have to figure out some other way.’ So that summer, I tried to save money and tried to get enough money to buy a trombone, but it didn’t work out. My efforts came up well short of what I would have needed.

I never played in band again – that was the end.”