Ok folks, this is my first thread. I was going to wait awhile (ya, right) but I just got to get this off my chest.
Last weekend I was in Toronto, helping a friend build his fence. This friend and I used to be in a band together. We did really well while I was a member: three releases, a few small tours, etc.
I left the bad about 7 yrs ago or so, mainly because it was getting too serious. It was time to go into the studio again, another tour was being planned, and we were actually looking at a few contracts from big companies. I had a decent job and basically decided that I should leave the band and focus my efforts on my family and job.
So this last weekend, we doing the standard “so what have you been doing lately?” thing and he tells me that the band (he left 3 yrs ago) just got back from Japan.
JAPAN!!!
Oh yeah, Japan. And they had just finished a European tour, too.
Ok, the truth is I don’t regret my decision. I’m happy where I am with my kids and my wife and my suburban “unique fixer-upper” of a house, but dammit… Japan? Europe?
I know how you feel, dewt. When I was in grade 3, I was in a children’s orchestra, playing violin, quite well. It was great to be around other kids and not have to dumb down. I had friends and I was happy. We were serious about our music, but we did some serious messing around, too.
When I started grade 4, my mom abruptly decided that she was tired of hearing her siblings brag about their kids’ athletic accomplishments. She wanted me to join a team so she could brag about me. I guess being first violin at age ten (in the 6-10 age group) is something to be ashamed of. So I joined the track team, at her behest. I was miserable. The other girls ragged me mercilessly, and I wasn’t good. My mom didn’t want to hear it. I lost touch with the kids from the orchestra, and lost interest in the violin. My mom had wanted me to keep practicing, but without performing as an incentive, practice meant nothing.
Oddly, in the spring, the other girls came round, apologized, and started being nice to me. I got a blue ribbon for the 50-yard dash, and I thought my life had turned around. But when I went back in the fall, everyone hated me again (mostly the same people), so I quit for good.
I never went back to the violin. I deeply regret this, because my closest friend in college played harmonica and blues guitar. If I still had had a violin and the necessary skill, I could have learned blues fiddle and gone on the road with him. My life could have been entirely different. Especially since I ran into the same jockettes in middle school, and I guess I don’t have to draw you any pictures. I don’t think community sports should take every kid who shows up. If they’d given me a tryout, I would have been cut, as I should have been, and I could have gone back to the orchestra.
Thank you mom, for supporting me in what I wanted to do and had talent for. Thank you for caring more about your siblings’ opinions than about my needs.