RDP Thursday: FLUTE

When I think of flutes I think of Valerie and Shelly, they lived next door to me when I was about 12 years old.

I don’t remember how old they were, but I do remember they were learning to drive so they were in high school.

During the Summer and into the school year Valerie and Shelly would sit cross legged in Shelley’s front yard- their long straight hair parted in the middle, clad in bell bottom jeans and wearing their floral headbands and they would stare intently at each other and play their flutes.

I was intrigued for two reasons.

First of all they both wore braces on their teeth – and back then we didn’t have fun braces. Oh no. If you wore braces in the 70’s you had some serious hardware in your mouth. So I wondered what that felt like.

The next thing I was curious about were the boys who would show up and listen to them play.

These were the same boys who wouldn’t know Mozart or Claude Debussy were even if those great composers literally ran them down in a horse drawn carriage and guess what these guys didn’t care who Mozart and Debussy  were. They liked bands like Kiss and Earth Wind and Fire or Foghat.

But they liked Shelly and Valerie and I’m here to tell you I learned  in Shelly’s front yard that not only was love was blind  it was deaf too  before I ever even kissed a boy.

My Grandfather loved classical music and I did like it and I actually listened to it on  my own and I knew for a fact that if Mozart heard what Shelly and Valerie were doing to his work he would have vomited all over Valerie and Shelly’s front yard concerts.

But it was a learning experience and I suppose I took it for what it was:

On one hand I watched these girls slaughter some beautiful music and on the other hand I watched a bunch of boys sit there looking like this was the most beautiful thing they had ever seen.

It was a year or so later that I finally understood what was going one- but to tell you the truth my ears still do bleed a little when I remember those warm evenings when Shelly and Valerie played their flutes and I grew up, just a bit.