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From the Oh Get a Grip blog (viewer discretion advised on this link), a story:
From dance I went to band.
My favorite cousin played the French horn in her school band, and I just had to play too. I had a good ear for music, so I signed up for my school’s marching band and spent the next few years struggling to play as well as everyone else. You see, I had the ear for music, but not the mouth. French horn demands a hell of a lot on the muscles of the lips and face. Some days, an hour of class would leave me with a throbbing mouth and cracked lips. Not a pleasant way to go through the rest of the school day. Plus I always got so damned nervous during auditions and exams that I bombed every single time.
I was the worst French horn player in the school, and I knew it. By the end of my junior year, I figured I’d suffered enough, so I didn’t bother to sign up for marching band the next year. When my instructor found out, he laid into me like nobody’s business. “You’re a quitter!” he screamed at me. “A lousy quitter who can’t commit and can’t finish what she started! And you’ll never amount to anything, ever!”
You better believe I never looked back when I walked away from that conversation.
[Updated 2021 JE from a Random Monday post]
