Juniorbird.com

My first musical failure — at least, to the extent that I am aware — came when I was three. We were in Boulder, Colorado for a year, living in a rented house that was, naturally, filled with it’s owner’s family’s posessions. Furniture, of course, and photos, and a cat, and, as I discovered one day, a hot pink toy guitar.
I loved that guitar; I’d stand in the den and play it and make some sort of noise for minutes on end, which was probably pretty good for a three-year-old. I probably sang “Puff the Magic Dragon”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puff_the_Magic_Dragon since one of the few things that was strong enough to stick in my memory at that age was a series of Peter, Paul and Mary concerts that we went to. But, at any rate, I loved that guitar. I’d hold it close to my chest and, with the strings facing me, squeeze my arm in between the guitar and me and strum those strings. One day, my parents caught me and revealed the horrible truth: guitars are properly held with the strings facing _away_. I tried to play it that way once but it felt uncomfortable so I put aside the hot pink plastic guitar and went to do something more profitable, like playing with skunks.
(But that’s a story for another time.)
When I was in elementary school, I was horribly jealous of my classmate Luke, who played the trumpet and who brought his trumpet to music class several times. I wanted to play the trumpet too, but I was too shy to ask.
Finally, my mother decided I should play the piano, so, in third grade, off I went to study with an old lady in the dark basement of the Quaker Meeting House next door to the evil Friends School of Baltimore, which I attended. One day we got a piano at home, and soon that was followed by a small, mustached man with roundish glasses who was purported to be able to teach me to play. My piano teacher, “Michael Haberman”:http://www.peabody.jhu.edu/1645, and I got along well, although he had this strange idea that I would learn to love to play Mozart, while the only thing I ever enjoyed playing was ragtime music and I will allow that I probably did not play that well at all.
It wasn’t for a lack of effort on Mr. Haberman’s part, anyway. We’d meet every week and he’d review what I’d learned and practice some exercises and give me homework, and it wasn’t my mother’s fault, either, because she diligently put me in front of the piano for 30 minutes every day to practice. However, as I now appreciate, I learned about one year of piano skils in four years of study, a performance that we can all agree falls somewhat short of the inspiration I hope to provide to youth today. Yes, I was a crappy pianist. Perhaps because of my stubby fingers, perhaps because of my almost complete inability to coordinate activities with my left hand while I was doing something with my right (to say nothing of foot movements to control the pedals!), perhaps because of my innate and rather exceptional lack of rhythm, but most likely because I learned how to make my mother’s kitchen timer run fast so that my 30-minute practices lasted barely 10, I was a deeply, deeply mediocre pianist.
(I apologize to all of the mediocre pianists whom I just insulted by comparing their performance to mine.)
One day, my mother suggested that I quit the piano, so I ran away. I realized I should pack for the trip, so I took my school backpack and put in a box of spaghetti, already opened; a can of tuna; and a pack of Capri Sun. I ran to the park down the street, where I sat and drank the Capri Sun. Then I realized it was getting dark, and I had no can opener, so I went home. The next week, my mother suggested that I not quit the piano, which seemed an even worse idea, so this time I ran out of the house crying. However, I was not gone long and, in my haste to leave, had neglected to pack this time.
Somehow, as a result of this, the lessons and, soon, the piano disappeared. I think it was a Steinway, and I wonder now if I have some memory of having picked the color of the finish.
In eleventh grade, I found a kazoo that had somehow been jammed behind a shelf, probably since a second-grade birthday party. I tried very hard to make a tune come out of it but, however I blew, I could only produce one single boisterous, farting, spittle-filled note.

Every year, thousands, if not millions, fall victim to the social faux-pas called “regifting.” These poor souls get gifts given to others, gifts which were unsatisfying to the original recipient and thus have been passed along to the next unwitting giftee. There is wholesale gift-related recycling in my family, but it’s not of the content of the brightly-wrapped boxes under each year’s tree; it’s of the brightly-colored wrapping itself.
This is a challenging tradition. Most of you all out there in blog-land get to grab your gift from under the tree, tear through the wrapping paper, and fish out your precious, precious gift. In my family, it’s quite the opposite; we turn the wrapped gift around and around in our hands, understanding how the wrapping was taped together, then gently separate the tape from the wrapping, unfold the precious, reusable film, place it to the side, fold it, and then — and only then — help ourselves to our gifts.
And every year, the day before Christmas Eve, we take down a bag full of old wrapping paper, bows, cards, and ribbons, then each take turns wrapping our gifts. We find a sheet of paper about the right size for the item in question, tape a matching bow on top (the bows have been reused enough that their bases are no longer sticky), find an old card that has the name of the gifter and of the recipient on it (with just four of us, that’s an easy combination to find), then tape that card on because it too is no longer sticky. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, we’ll find a piece of wrapping paper of the right size, with a card already stuck on with the right sender and the right recipient. Why, some of the wrapping paper we use goes back to high school for me, and some of the ornaments and bows are even older than I am.
Then, Christmas morning, the little family gets together, we sit around the poinsettia (my grandmother’s apatment is too small for a tree), we see the same familiar paper and bags and bows and wrappings, and we talk as we slowly open our gifts, then take out this year’s new wonders from inside.

My grandmother’s best friend is 97. My grandmother, who is quite mobile but mostly blind, is 93; Juanita^*^ has limited mobility but can see better than most people half her age. They go out together, Juanita driving, my grandmother helping Juanita walk, then they have lunch together and gossip about people long gone, reminiscing together about the scandals and achievments that once excited and amused them. Listening to them, it’s like fans watching a favorite movie again, appreciating new details of every scene even as it’s replayed the forty-seventh time.
Tonight I met one of Juanita’s sons and his wife. Now, I’d always thought highly of Juanita, but seeing what a good man her son is certainly made me think even more highly of her. Family is really the legacy that most people leave, and it’s wonderful to see such a special legacy. Juanita and her son clearly are quite close, he looking up to her and she filled with pride in him.
Her son’s wife is also an exceptional example. A deeply religious woman (she told us that she once was going to clean out her husband’s workshop, but God told her to accept her husband and seek harmony in their relationship), she loves to cook, just like her mother-in-law. She also has a ready laugh and even all of the small physical habits and tics of the beautiful, flirtatious woman she once must have been.
How is it that families and people grow from being together the way they do? I’ve seen this kind of a relationship as I grew up and I dream of having one of my own.
–* Don’t ask me how a child of Danish immigrants got the name Juanita–

p. Actual conversation heard outside the Baja Fresh:
bq.. 7-year-old boy: Let’s play Halo!
5-year-old boy: Yeah, Halo! Bang! Boom!
7-year-old boy: I’ll be the Master Chief
5-year-old boy: And I’ll be the aliens!
7-year-old boy: (pretending to hold machinegun) Brrrap! Brrrap!
5-year-old boy: (wielding straw like an energy blade) Zzzzhew! Zzzzhew!
7-year-old boy: Brrrap! Brrrap!
5-year-old boy: Aaah! (dies, respawns)
7-year-old boy: Brrrap! Click! (Imitates reloading machinegun) Chunk! Brrrap!
5-year-old boy: Aaah! (dies, respawns)
7-year-old boy: Brrrap! Brrrap!
5-year-old boy: Zzzzhew! Zzzzhew!
p. Son, when I was your age, we played “secret agent”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089901/, we had cap guns that went bang! bang!, and we never, ever, reloaded. Just like in the movies. Times change, huh?

I’ve always been bad with combination locks. This time last year, when everyone else was celebrating the fact that they had a brand new locker and no longer needed to lug around their 900-page Accounting and 700-page Microecon books at the same time, I could only think “oh my god, 250 new people — all of whom I’d like to impress — will now have the opportunity to watch me try to open a combination lock multiple times a day.” And the math is bad: an average of four tries per open, times the three times I go into the locker a day, equals nine unsuccessful attempts to open my locker every day (plus three successful). But then I thought, hey, it’s not likely to be as bad as third grade.
My exceptional lack of skill at combination lock-opening was visible from a young age. One day, in second grade, they herded us into the gym, sent the girls into another room, and made us form a line. Each of us boys got a blue shirt, blue shorts, and a combination lock. Then Mr. LaMonica (a distant, and remarkably dyspeptic, relative of the “Raiders’ QB”:http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/LamoDa00.htm) showed us, just once, how to work the locks, and sent us off to our assigned lockers. Of course, after gym class was over, Mr. LaMonica had to come over and use his special key to open my lock and free my street clothes.
And that was the first day of the same story, over and over again. We’d get out of gym class, head to the locker room, and then I’d struggle and struggle to open my locker while everyone else changed. If I was lucky, I’d be one of the last three or four students to head back to class; if I wasn’t, I’d show up at my homeroom, five minutes late for the next class, still wearing my blue shirt and poofy, elastic-waisted blue shorts. Everyone would stare at me, and my teacher would have to call up the recess teacher, who had a special key that would open my locker.
In retrospect, at least I got to miss a good half of the next class every time this happened. Or, on some days, even more. Like on the day in third grade that Matt and Alex, two more popular — and much bigger — kids dressed slowly, like I did.
Matt always had a bad attitude, and was notable for the very dark circles under his eyes that set off his straight, cornflower-blond hair, as well as for being about a foot taller than everyone else in the class. Alex was shorter and English and had curly white hair — well, so blond that it was nearly white. Both of them owned those Michael Jackson t-shirts, the red ones with the black mesh on them, that I was too scared to ask for (and then, when my parents finally bought me one, that I was too self-conscioius to wear).
Matt didn’t have too many friends, but Alex was a pretty popular kid; I remember, on the last day of fourth grade, Alex told the class that his family was moving back to England, and that he wouldn’t be at school with us in the fall. Then he cried, and all the girls cooed over him while the guys shook his hand goodbye. But I just stayed in my seat; I was happy to see him go.
That day in third grade, I was taking my usual sweet time to get changed. I’d already been behind opening my locker, and I was always a slow dresser too. I was surprised that Matt and Alex were taking so long to dress and thrilled that they were bothering to talk to me. My blue uniform was off and I was sitting on the bench in my street t-shirt and tighty-whities, getting ready to pull on my pants, when they shoved me up against the lockers. Then Alex held me down while Matt punched me in the stomach again and again. I closed my eyes tight and when I opened them my stomach still hurt but Matt and Alex were gone.
I sat there for a moment; I’d never been beaten up before and didn’t know what to do. My locker had been pushed shut during the fight and I didn’t feel like opening it again, so I put my poofy blue shorts back on and walked to my homeroom. When I got there, the teacher asked me why I was dressed so funny, in my street shirt and my gym shorts, and I said “because Matt and Alex beat me up.”
I don’t think that was the answer they expected. I always was a little sell-out.
Now, I think we can all agree that there’s essentially no chance that anybody will beat me up in the Marshall School locker room. But, when I’m on my fifth try at spinning in my combination and the darned thing still won’t open, I sometimes wonder, if getting beat up in the locker room in third grade won’t learn me to open my combination lock quickly, what will?

In sixth grade, I switched schools. Rite of passage, sure, but the hard part (insofar as I had minimal-to-no social skills) was to make friends. Somehow, I ended up part of a band of misfits. There was Blaise, the brilliant Spaniard; Larry, the incredibly creative son of a chicken parts magnate; John, the business-focused Korean; and me.
Actually, that sounds like the premise for a bad movie.
Through sixth and seventh grades, we were happy campers; but “happy campers”:http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dan_Quayle we would not always be. Blaise was the first to go, as he transitioned from bowl-cut-coiffed young nerd to chubby preteen nerd, we took to calling him “Shamu”. I think John coined the name. We’d chase poor Blaise around the school, cruelly yelling his whale-name, laughing the whole way. Blaise soon transferred to another school.
By this time, John was actually beginning to show social skills, allowing him to interact successfully with more popular students. Sadly, this didn’t rub off on me. Larry was developing his own set of social skills but had no interest in the set of people John was beginning to know; I was simply desperate for any friends, so I began to shadow John around. Of course, once he was hanging out with more popular kids I had no ability to join in the conversation, but I hoped that a vacuous smile would somehow make up for that.
John, Larry and I had spent most of our sixth- and seventh grade weekends meeting at his house — which was in a housing development on the edge of an undeveloped area in suburban Owings Mills — or at my house, which was in the city near a feeder river for the Baltimore reservoir system. We’d play with cap guns, running around in the empty lots near John’s house or clambering around the rocks and concrete walls of the Stony Run river, imagining ourselves secret agents like James Bond, “Remo Williams”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089901/ or Michael Dudikoff in “American Ninja”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088708/. But Larry gained weight and couldn’t keep up, and John, suddenly, began to have other things to do on the weekend. I think he was playing Hearts or Sabermatic baseball with the popular kids, like Andy and Alan, in Columbia. Where the popular kids lived.
I slowly found myself eating with others in the cafeteria, as John moved to full tables (or the table filled up around him while I was buying my usual turkey sandwich, yogurt, and sugar cookies). When I did manage to secure a spot near John, I had nothing to say to his friends and they had nothing to say to me. I knew to laugh at the right points in their conversation but I had no inkling of a way to get myself into it. As the table would get full, my space would shrink, I’d turn my tray sideways and slide my chair out so that more people could fit their seat in. And, then, even at the table, I was leaning back, squeezing in, not participating.
The end didn’t come until the beginning of ninth grade. With Larry hanging with another crowd and Blaise gone, I was an uncomfortable appendix for John. Naturally, he often ignored me as I followed him around, by striking up conversations with people I didn’t know, not introducing us, and ditching me to hang out with the cool kids in the brand-new, glassed-in Commons, not the geeks in the studying annex to the library.
One day, outside of algebra class, John and one of his new friends, Scott, played a joke that made us all laugh — they took the chalk dust from a blackboard and spread it over some poor sucker’s backpack (it might have been Sunil’s). I laughed along because I wanted all of the popular kids to know that I wasn’t just a humorous tool — but it backfired. A few days later, Scott decided to play the joke on me, except this time he unzipped my bag and poured the chalk inside. All of my notes and my doodles and my pens and my calculator were covered with the yellow dust and it took me hours to get it out — I think I was leaving little square, yellow outlines of my notebooks for a day or two. I was furious, and, for whatever reason, I blamed John.
And then I lost it. After months of teasing and being ignored, I was angry and I said the worst things I could think of about John and his ancestry. And I said them loudly. Then I went to the library and hid in one of the carrels.
John and his posse found me. He was angry at what I’d said, and rightly — although I remember to this day that Scott never took responsibility for the prank or tried to defuse things. Scott just stood behind a furious John as my old friend first threatened, then hit me. And, being a black belt, he hit hard. I was too smart to hit back so, dazed by his thunderous punch right to my cheek, I got up and left the library. I don’t remember where I hid but it was probably in the woods behind the school. I knew that was it; I was never getting my group of friends back.
After the next year, one of my remaining friends was expelled for being too poor and Gentile for a school like Park. I came back to those carrels in the libary and spent most of the next two years alone, reading science fiction, spending my time not with friends but with my imagination.
In twelfth grade, as graduation sped towards us, John and I finally talked again. We were both sad for what we’d done, sad for the loss of a good friend, and we both had happy memories of our times in Owings Mills and Stony Run. But, after a short time of talking, we both went back to our friends. We’d moved on.

If you’re a football fan like me, eagerly awaiting the arrival on TV of those sweet, sweet games you’ve been waiting for all year (and, even better, the start of your Fantasy Football game), then you may know that we’re now in football training camp season. As an intellectually pompous youngster, I used to go to nerd camp — right down the street from the Redskins’ training camp.
“Nerd camp”:http://www.jhu.edu/~gifted/ took place at “Dickinson College”:http://dickinson.edu/ in bucolic Carlisle, PA. Every day was filled with classes, and, after classes, there were all sorts of activities available; some of these were even athletic. Now, I know you’d hardly expect nerds to want to play sports, but it was actually quite relieving to:
# Play sports with individuals who were, um, at my skill level
# Learn that there actually were athletes who were smart, they weren’t all evil and socially oppressive
So, most afternoons, my friends and I would head over to some of Dickinson’s practice fields to play Ultimate Frisbee. And, along the way back, we’d walk past Dickinson’s football field. There would always be twenty or thirty Redskins players and coaches on the field, warming up for their second two-a-day. We’d often stick around for a few minutes and watch, but we were all nerds and didn’t really get what was going on. Plus, I was from Baltimore, and the Redskins were our mortal enemies.
For three years, I got to see the Redskins at training camp; then, a couple of years later, I actually learned to like football. If I could go back, I’d ask nerd camp to teach a class in “Appreciating Football”. Nerd camp, and the ‘Skins, are still in Dickinson, and, dammit, school nerds need to learn to be sports nerds too!

During my horribly-oppressed youth at a Quaker School, I, like many other children in America (and, probably, worldwide), availed myself of the pleasures of playing in the sandbox. Now, most sandboxes are places for children to dig holes and build mounds and get sand in their shoes; at my Quaker school, sandboxes were a tool to enforce conformity. And to get sand in our shoes.
There were three sandboxes at my Quaker School. One was big and had monkey bars over it; if you wanted to play in the sandbox with all the other kids, then you’d play there. For those of us who valued our solitude and/or quiet time in which to contemplate the mysteries of the universe, you could choose from one of the other two:
* The sandbox right near the door, near which the recess teacher always stood, her watchful eyes always judging and watching for your misbehavior so that she could yell (she loved to yell).
* The sandbox far away, sheltered underneath tall trees, where the cats liked to poop.
Now, when I was seven I fully appreciated the structural strength of cat poop in the sand creations I made. However, I didn’t care for the stink. As I was a little pansy and feared loud sounds, I had to avoid the recess teacher and her hobby of raising her voice. That left the communal sandbox, and I think they planned it that way, so that I had to, you know, interact with other kids and awful stuff like that.
Although I don’t think they meant me to see all the underpants of all the girls who climbed the monkey bars overhead.