Mum I have broken my...

[woolymonkey]

When you're worried about the accident prone Spidermonkey you sent off to Norfolk with suspected glandular fever and a friend who's re-engineered his lighter as a flame thrower, you do not want to be called out of the shower by the phone ringing. Especially not for a mechanically-voiced SMS message that begins, 'Mum, I have broken my...'

After a brief pause to allow me to succumb to heart failure, undergo CPR, and recover my sense of hearing, the message continues:
'...trumpet. Please bring my old cornet when you come to the performance. Squirrelmonkey.'

I'm still shaky from shock, but as I get dressed and rush over to school with the old cornet, am I the only one wondering, how the fuck did that happen?!?!

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Eep. I'm glad it's a trumpet and not a limb. I sympathise hugely over the scare.

[ladymoonray.livejournal.com]

Good grief! I think some monkey training is in order. I was always taught to say 'Mum, I'm OK, but my flute/horse/calculator/textbook/car isn't.' But that may have just been because I was so flipping accident-prone.

[amenirdis.livejournal.com]

Oh dear! I admit, I nearly have heart failure whenever her school calls. And it's usually something like "to remind you that next Wednesday is International Day" or to let me know she's gotten her shoes wet leaping in a pond and will be coming home in a spare pair of flip flops that must be returned to the school.

[lj_stowaway]

Yikes! Much empathy!

[ladymoonray.livejournal.com]

ROFL! I did some fairly horrendous things with my instruments, and I once dropped my Dad's bass clarinet and broke it horribly, but I don't think I ever got a pencil stuck in one :)

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

Eep indeed. But Hair went well even without the trumpet, and Spider is now safely home, only slightly sunburnt, minus a lot of tent pegs, but also minus glandular fever. (Blood test results arrived about the same time he did.)

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

The point has now been made. To be fair to Squirrel, he was texting me from a borrowed phone in the middle of an actual performance. He loved your list of things that weren't OK.

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

I'm getting better with the school calls, but I've been on red alert all week in case Spider did have glandular fever and I had to go rescue him from his camping trip. Of course, today was also the deadline for my students to submit their big end of course assessments, so the phone has been ringing a lot!

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

Some little sod once rammed the mouthpiece of Squirrel's cornet into the bell. Luckily, the brass teacher was able to get it out in the end.

The 'breakage' turns out to be recurrence of an old problem. One of the valves tends to stick ever since he dropped the trumpet on the floor. (Note to Older Son: never hold your euphonium by the mouthpiece, even when it's on your lap!) We hire the trumpet from the county music service, who are stars and will fix it for free, or just a small charge. Just as long as he promises not to drop it again...

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

Have you stuck your head out the upstairs window and looked above your house lately? Is there a black cloud just kind of hanging there? Because I would not be surprised, really ...

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

There's a big black cloud there most days, but then this is England, so black clouds are normal.