Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

My father used to work at the University of Maryland, and he used to take the family to Terrapin football and basketball games (even a soccer game once). Lots of trips to Byrd Stadium and Cole Fieldhouse when I was in middle school and high school. Earlier today a series of tangential thoughts brought me to memories of how, when we wound up sitting behind the band at basketball games, I would lean forward as far as I could and try to read their sheet music, hoping to memorize enough of it to be able to reconstruct the tunes from that starting place on recorder or electric-reed-organ when I got home. I usually failed to memorize enough, but most of the time I couldn't get close enough to the instruments playing the parts I most wanted anyhow. Still, I'd forgotten until today that I was that interested in any sheet music I could steal a glimpse of as early as that. (No, it's not an impressively young age or anything; it's just relatively early in my development as a music-geek. I learned standard notation and recorder in seventh grade, but didn't pick up guitar until twelfth grade.)

Remembering that has conjured other memories, earlier than the basketball ones. Composing my first (very very short) tune on the chord organ. Going through a book of Christmas carols to find the ones I could play using the notes I knew on the alto recorder. Wondering how many weeks allowance a galvanized steel washtub would cost because I wanted to make a washtub bass (later this changed to a dream of playing electric washtub bass in a rock 'n' roll band. But I haven't gotten around to building it yet. Maybe that should be a goal for this Spring -- finally build that electric washtub. I figure I'll turn the entire bottom of the tub into one plate of a huge condenser mic, and see whether I get away with that.). Watching the banjo player at Shakey's (pizza parlor chain) and thinking the banjo was the coolest thing. And once in a blue moon when I was small, watching my father pull out his trombone (which he gave up entirely, alas, before I picked up the guitar). Oh, and trying to figure out how to start a rock band using recorder, bongos, and chord organ, because that's what we had and I really wanted to be a rock musician.

I guess the music thing took root in me a long time before I got my hands on an axe. Hmm. I wonder what else I've forgotten.

Not that I expect this to be all that interesting, but I figure somebody will wonder just what the chain of tangents was...

1. In the shower, I heard a fire truck go by. I thought a quick prayer for the firefighters: "Lord, please bring them success, amen."
2. That got me thinking about the distribution of the different pronunciations of "amen" -- "ay-men" and "ah-men".
3. Which in turn reminded me of the hymn "Amen", which kind of lends itself to the "ay" sound (not inexorably, but it does kind of lead the singer thataway).
4. But before I ever saw that in a hymnal in church and realized it had verses, I knew the chorus as what Terps fans sang after victories.
5. That, of course, reminded me of singing it at basketball games in Cole Fieldhouse, with the band playing it.
6. Thinking of the band at basketball games, I remembered how they liked to play "Three Blind Mice" or the Looney Tunes theme as the referees entered the arena.
7. And as soon as I remembered that, I remembered trying to see the sheet music for "Looney Tunes" ... and for "Hawaii Five-Oh", both of which I really wanted to learn to play.

Then I noticed that my hands were still colder than the rest of me.