Earlier in the school year, I visited Audio’s classroom to play some songs for the Kindergartners.  It went well and Audio was happy that I’d done it.  Her teacher was out, sick that day.  So, the school principal was her substitute. She allowed me to play four songs.  When we had Audio’s parent teacher conference a while after that day, the teacher asked if I wanted to return and play for the kids again so she could see me play.  I said that I would and then picked up a cold with a sufficiently stuffy nose and put the idea on the back burner.  While the idea was simmering, I realized that I didn’t have any other kid-friendly material beyond what I’d played during my first visit.  The easiest way to fix that problem was to enlist Dee Dee to do the singing which could possibly give the appearance of playing different songs. 

Dee Dee was up for it and the teacher agreed to my condition of playing only if I could bring a certain third grader with me.  Dee Dee’s teacher gave his approval, so we got to work on practicing a short set.  We had two songs that appeared on her CD, a song that she’d completed at the end of last year, a song she’s been working on for a while (when her sinuses allow) and a new song that I wrote for the event.  We practiced the songs for a little over a week, going through the songs once every day.  As we got closer to the big day, we repeated songs or bits of songs that Dee Dee was struggling with, lyrically.  One problem we had was that I didn’t know some of the lyrics, either.  We found printouts of the lyrics and pushed on. 

The night before our performance, Dee Dee had difficulty falling asleep and came downstairs to tell us so.  She hadn’t expressed any concerns or anxiety about performing during the previous week.  But it seemed to catch up to her once she was in bed the night before the big gig.  After sending her back to bed, I went up to her room to talk with her.  She was worried about making mistakes.  I told her that she would make mistakes, and that I would too.  And, with Audio in the room, I advised Dee Dee that Kindergartners won’t know the difference whether she makes a mistake or not, unless she draws attention to it.  Luckily, Audio was already asleep and wasn’t offended.  By the time I finished talking with Dee Dee, she was pretty sleepy.  That was the extent of Dee Dee’s stage fright. 

On Friday morning, we started the day by walking the girls to school, then returned home for my guitar, which I placed in the trunk of my car to drive back to school.  Last time around, I walked to the school and carried my guitar.  Acoustic guitars are by no means heavy, but good-quality cases are.  I had arranged for Dee Dee to meet me in the school’s main office.  She arrived there just as I was signing in and we walked to Audio’s classroom, Dee Dee hustling along the whole way.  I stuffed my jacket in Audio’s locker and then we snuck into the classroom. We were a couple minutes early, so we were treated to a bit of Audio’s regular morning schedule.  There was attendance, which consisted of name calling by the teacher followed by an “I love . . .” from the named student directed at a classmate or teacher.  Then, we were treated to the word of the day, which consisted of a video of Grover from Sesame Street accidentally discovering what courteous meant by being courteous.  After that, the teacher had Audio get in front of the kids and introduce Dee Dee and me. 

The performance went as well as could be hoped.  Dee Dee got lost during the first verse of the first song, so I joined in and sang with her until she got back on track.  At the end of the song, one girl raised her hand and said, “You played that last time you were here.”  On the next song (another repeat), I managed to play the chords of the verse during the chorus. If any of the Kindergartners noticed, they didn’t let on about it. Then, we played our version of the ABCs, which the kids knew the “words” to, but not our melody, leading to an odd, but fun call and response experience.  We made it through the next song, even though the kids were all clapping out of time. It felt a bit like trying to keep time in a tin shed on a rainy day. 
 
Before starting our last song, I knelt down on the floor and handed guitar picks to two girls sitting right in front of me and invited them to strum the guitar a bit. They were nonplussed, but other kids got excited when a ridiculous number of brightly colored, but uselessly thin guitar picks fell out of my pocket. I had counted out more than enough for each student to have one. I figured it would be more fun to hand them out to the kids than just dropping them in the trash.  From the floor, I joined Dee Dee for one last sing-along that had the children howling like wolves at the end of the song.  After it was over, I handed off the rest of my pocketful of picks to Audio who enjoyed doling them out to her classmates. 

Just as these sorts of things always seem to go, it was over as soon as it started.  Dee Dee and I packed up and left as the kids went back to whatever it is that they had next on their schedule.  I grabbed my jacket out of Audio’s locker and then walked with Dee Dee as far as the front office.  She went to her classroom for Literacy, and I went home.  At the end of the school day, neither Dee Dee nor Audio had anything to say about what I thought had been an exciting morning.  So, eventually I asked Dee Dee if she had fun, and she said that she had, but said little else.  I asked Audio if she had anything to say about what she or her classmates thought about our visit, and she didn’t.  Later in the evening, Dee Dee and I discussed how it felt to be finished with the thing we’d been working on for a while, and how even though we did what we’d set out to do, we missed the part of having a thing practice for. We agreed that we need something new to work on.

POV, Perfect Day, ABCs, Nicer, A Couple Wolves