Two Flutes

My family listened to an especially hearty stream of Jethro Tull growing up, and I don’t know if it was because of that, or because the case was so small, but I chose the flute as my instrument in middle school band class. And because I grew up playing the piano and had been taking flute lessons from my neighbor, Mrs. Fleik,* I started sixth grade already pretty good at the flute, along with Kelly O’Shea,* who had been taking lessons from Mrs. Fleik, too.

*Names changed but just barely

Trust me, it’s just a lucky coincidence that I’ve been brainstorming ways to gloat on the internet about being pretty good at playing the flute twenty years ago, but Kelly and I were pretty good. We were far enough ahead of the rest of the sixth graders that our band teacher, Ms. Bird, held us after class one day and suggested that we enter Solo and Ensemble, a district-wide music competition for seventh and eighth graders. We just couldn’t tell anyone at the competition that we were in sixth grade; we shouldn’t even tell anyone else at school that we were entering. She whispered this to us in a giant, empty room with a level of seriousness that was surprising, but our flute teacher was even more intense about it when we brought it up to her. We met after a lesson in her living room where she made us and both our moms promise wouldn’t tell a soul — and we agreed. It was exciting; our first little flute scandal. A piccolo of scandals!

Mrs. Fleik helped us choose a duet and we practiced for two months. The morning of the competition my parents and I met Kelly and her mom at a community college a few towns over. We found an open room to run through the song a few final times, and then headed into a room with the judge. We played our duet, and fueled by a fervor that only someone secretly entering a flute contest a year earlier than you’re supposed to would understand, really killed it. We finished and smiled at our parents sitting in the back. They smiled. The judge took a moment to finish writing her notes but her eyebrows already seemed impressed. “That was fantastic, ladies,” she said.

And then, immediately, “What grade are you in?”

We stopped smiling. We stopped breathing. Our faces simultaneously pitched into matching, unprepared terror. Kelly and I stared at each other with our eyeballs inflating out of our faces, frantically trying to get our story straight telepathically. Do we say sixth grade and get disqualified? Say seventh grade and lie? Benjamin Button wasn’t a movie yet so some sort of aging-backwards situation didn’t even cross our minds.

We just stood there holding our flutes, visually flustered and not answering her question for a very, awkwardly-long time.

Zero adults had prepared us for this.

And also, no one had told my dad.

He sat in the back of the room, growing more and more baffled at why asking what grade we were in had knocked both of us into a mute, agonized panic. He looked at my mom, but her pupils were stiff with worry, as if the judge had just asked us where in the building we’d hid the bag of hair. Kelly’s mom was frozen in the chair next to mine. The four of us had accidentally abandoned my dad in the innocent reality where what grade you’re in was a simple fact with zero flute competition consequences, and he was very, very confused.

“It’s… not a tough question…” he said, breaking the silence.

Oh no.
I flung my face to the back of the room, realizing no one told him.

“…Go ahead…tell her.” he coaxed.

I stared at him.

“…Sixth. You’re in sixth grade,” he said. Twice. He said it twice!

“DAD!” I whisper-yelled.

“What!” he said, not whispering, looking around the room for any clue at why we were all being so incredibly weird about this friendly, uncomplicated question.

Kelly and I turned back to the judge and told her, “Um, yeah I guess we’re in…sixth…grade.”

“Sixth grade!” she said. “Well, that’s impressive. You both should be very proud.”