Musically Gifted? Well, I Used to Play the Recorder...

Fourteen: A Guitar Has Strings, Right?

Fourteen: A Guitar Has Strings, Right?

    “Okay, guys! Uh… sounding good!”

            Well, that’s a total lie. But seriously, how are you meant to break the news to six (well, five, if you exclude Bobby, who doesn’t really do much more than look constantly terrified) unruly kids that they sound worse than a crowd of tone deaf whining dogs?

            Without getting punched in the face, that is.

            I am really not the right person to be mentoring a musical performance. However, I’m also not the right person to be a counselor at a camp for musically gifted kids when I know nothing about music myself, and that didn’t stop me.

            Probably should’ve, though.

            The seven of us have spent the entire afternoon stuck in one of the practice rooms, trying to put together something that won’t embarrass us completely when it comes to the performance. For some strange reason other than they are a bit sick in the head, the supervisors have decided it would be a good ‘bonding’ exercise for the counselors to arrange some sort of musical ensemble with their cabin. Which is what I’m doing now.

            Well, when I say that, what I really mean is all of the kids mindlessly doing their own thing while I do my best to act like I know what I’m doing.

            I don’t.

            “Are you kidding?” Isaac says, eyeing me with a disbelieving expression. I have to say, sitting on a stool with his acoustic guitar perched on his knee, he looks totally professional. More professional than me, anyway. “It sounds awful.”

            “Right,” I say brightly. “We’ll get it sorted, though, won’t we?”

            Jake throws his violin down and slumps moodily into a chair. So far, he’s refused to cooperate at all and has only actually played three notes. What kind of a ‘violin prodigy’ won’t even play a simple tune?

            Sometimes I wish he’d just punch Jenny or something and get kicked out.

            Not that I wish any eight year old abuse to Jenny or anything. But you know, it wouldn’t hurt her to take one for the team. Well, not really for the team… mostly for me to be free of Jake for the rest of the summer.

            Whoever it’s for, if she was a good supervisor, she’d be doing it.

            “If we had Blake we’d be okay,” Connor says.

            “Well, you haven’t got Blake. So suck it up and get on with it, okay?” Who said I can’t be assertive? Well, no one, but you know what I mean.

            The room falls into an uncomfortable silence and I glance round it, for lack of a better thing to do. The boys are looking at me expectedly for their next instruction, and to be frank, I don’t have any more of a clue than they do. It’s right about now that I’m beginning to regret my decision to ever come here – why couldn’t I have picked a normal summer camp, that doesn’t require an abnormal amount of musical knowledge that I just do not possess?

            “Uh… why don’t we all just… improvise?” I suggest lamely. It’s pretty obvious that it’s not going to sound any better than the disaster of sixty seconds ago, but I have no other useful ideas.

            “Because that’s what we’ve been doing for the past hour, and it sucks,” Jake says. “You’re a crap counselor. You don’t even know anything about music, so why are you here?”