The Trumpet
When Pop and Nana moved to Florida to live in an over 65 community, Pop bought a Trumpet.
It’s not a direct line of correlation typically, between trumpets and moving to Florida for retirement, but Pop was really hoping to learn how to play in order to “impress The Ladies”, which was only partially a joke, since he loved my Nana so much but also since he loved being adored by “The Ladies” (whoever they were?).
I don’t have many details about how learning to play the trumpet went for Pop. How long he pursued the instrument, or whether or not “The Ladies” were impressed. All I know is, somehow my Dad ended up in posession of the trumpet—and fast. I suspect that Dad most likely told Pop he was really enjoying Chris Botti’s music and was thinking of learning to play (“It’s not that hard probably, you just have to blow!” that’s a direct quote) and Pop gave him the trumpet knowing his time with the instrument had come to an end (Nana, I’m sure, had enough of his latest antic). It would, of course, be of much better use up in Massachusetts in Dad’s condominium complex. There’s just so much more opportunity for trumpets and the people who play them in a place like that.
And as it turns out, Pop was right. There was plenty of opportunity for my Dad to play his trumpet. He could play any time he wanted—any moment of any day that he wasn’t working and wasn’t already obliged with the responsibilities of having three kids and a dog and a cat. He could play on Monday, Tuesday or Thursday nights— even every other Wednesday night after we came over for dinner and left to go stay at Mom’s for the night—if he wanted to.
The only time Dad chose to practice the trumpet was actually every other Wednesday night—just the opposite Wednesday nights from the previously described. The Wednesday nights we came over for dinner and slept at his house, he would gear up just as everyone was winding down and start to practice at 10:30pm.
Obviously, the perfect, and only good time to learn how to play the trumpet.
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