If the man had lived in Texas this is what the good ol' boys would've said of him: "Sumbitch was too miserable to die, and Hell wouldn't have him anyway." Asshole is the operative word here. He'd miraculously survived some mighty illness only to re-enter the work force more arrogant than ever, as if it were proof that he was divinely selected. The man, a white man, was my instructor in music appreciation at Morgan State College, my least favorite teacher in the entire school, three of the eighteen credits I was carrying. It was my last semester at Morgan, and I wanted to go out with a 4.0 average, a goal which had eluded me although I'd come close many times, close enough to warrant magna but never summa. In retrospect I understand why, but that is for another time.
The man had a monstrous maw of an ego. When I picture him from this distance his head appears the size and shape of an alien's, light bulb like. He was also at the time the conductor of a small town orchestra. One class turned into a rant about how awful was every existing orchestral version of the "Star Spangled Banner" except for his. As proof he played it for the class, and it did, it sounded terrific. I wanted to hate it but didn't and couldn't. I think it only made me hate the man more. My contempt would cost me dearly.
As we say in the movie business, fade to black and come in seventeen years earlier when I was five years old. I might have been four. Somewhere in there my mother enrolled me in a percussion class at the local music conservatory, a class taught by this same man. I remember her taking me into this big studio type room -- it must have been an orchestral space -- with lots of drums. Kids were already there, and when once our mothers left us this man launched into a persnicketty recital of his rules. I only remember one: the first. "Do not touch those drums or those drumsticks unless I say so. Am I clear?" At that instant an evil impulse impounded a nearby set of drum sticks and beat them on the kettle drum in front of me. BawoomBawoomBawoomBawoom. "Am I clear?", I seemed to be saying. BawoomBawoomBawoomBawoom. Well, children, the guy went beserk. He bellowed for me to get my mother and tossed me out of his class. Dissolve to seventeen years later, and I am in the man's classroom one more time, seventeen years later and feeling exactly the same. I could not bear him. It wasn't the music -- that was fine when he played it -- it was his pontificating in extremis. I was five years old again, a tot with a strong sense of smell. If a drum had been in front of me I'm sure I would have pounded it. I'm not defending this impulse, only reporting it, although in some ways I think I still may be pounding that same damned drum. Picture me pounding on that drum at the same time I'm shooting myself in the foot. That had to be worth at least a bronze. I lost by a smirk. Music appreciation, the easiest course ever invented, cost me a perfect 4.0. You'd think by then I would have learned something? You'd think by now...?
