Sounds of Suburbia
This afternoon I heard some particularly disturbing noises coming from the neighbour’s house. ‘Hush!’ I commanded the children as I stood poised, hand cupping ear, ear pressed to the screen door.
‘What is it Mum?’ the kids looked terrified.
‘I’m not sure, it does sound like someone moaning in distress – listen’ I implored.
My mind was racing with the possibilities – had someone broken into the elderly neighbour’s home, knocked her over the head with her giant television remote and left her writhing on the floor - helpless?
Was someone in the neighbourhood in that dreaded stage two of labour and had lost the ability to do much but bellow like a wounded beast whilst simultaneously biting ferociously into the fleshy part of their beloved’s hand.
Had a baby dugong been kidnapped and now lay trapped helplessly in a cage in someone’s living room, being forced to endure endless re-runs of Oprah?
Eoooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwweeeeeee
There is was again!
The kids clutched at my arms – eyes as wide as saucers.
‘Mum! What is that horrible noise?’
I wracked my brain for an answer, and there amongst the wails came the faint semblance of some sort of tune.
‘Oh my goodness!’ I exclaimed, ‘I think it’s someone playing the recorder!’
The recorder.
The weapon of mass destruction, inflicted upon unsuspecting parents by music teachers seeking retribution for their own years of school-yard suffering.
That long holey plastic menace, masquerading as a musical instrument – tiresome in singular, lethal in groups.
Torment of many a parent, enduring the pitchy rendition of Baa Baa Black Sheep for the seventh time in an evening. Parents of sole children fortunate to get off lightly, with perhaps only six months of ear-bleeding, parents of three or more children relegated to years of aural torture – PTSD – being overcome by an involuntary shudder or terror when presented with anything remotely resembling a recorder – wands, chopsticks, cabanossi!
I recently saw an advertisement for the music of Frozen for the recorder – surely only a present one would buy for a child in another country (another hemisphere), or one’s sworn mortal enemy. Was it not enough that parents of little girls everywhere survived the endless rounds of Let It Go from their precious darlings aspiring to be Anna or Elsa? No, someone, somewhere, had inflicted this upon unsuspecting Mums and Dads everywhere.
Not to mention their neighbours.
It’s somewhat different being the parent of a little darling, a musical prodigy and clapping gleefully as they massacre a tune exclaiming ‘Did you hear
that? I think she has an ear for music’
Nope, neighbours everywhere are suffering in silence – victims of these daily practice sessions, of these off-key blasts carried over the fences and through windows everywhere in suburbia. Shattering the peace and quiet like a dying wildebeest in the clutches of an African lion.
Now the person who invents a set of headphones for the recorder is surely on to a winner – a veritable fortune to be made for the opportunist!
My own parents were fortunate to escape the recorder – we didn’t have the luxury of such items at our tiny rural school and made do with wooden sticks that were banged together with gusto, crafty paper drums with rubber bands, rice bottle shakers, and if we were very fortunate a single triangle – the object of desire, the star of the show, that produced that exquisite chime at the height of the end of year performance.
I too have counted myself lucky to miss a familial encounter with the recorder, and for that to the school, I am sincerely grateful.
This year it is strings, my eldest has chosen the cello – not altogether unpleasant when played by an amateur, in fact we had a solo cellist at our wedding many years ago (and listening back to the wedding video, I suspect that she too was an amateur – fortunately the champagne was flowing for guests before the ceremony).
But what’s that? Next year it’s brass? Trumpets? Saxophones? Tubas?!? Oh dear, I may have to send an apology note to the neighbours.
