Memoir/Life Lessons

“This One Time at Band Camp…”

(Or…What I Couldn’t Do With a Clarinet)

Author’s photo: No clarinet in hand—but this is about that very, very awkward phase and time of the infamous blue clarinet case. (Nice wire rims, yo!) Pictured with my dad & brother. (1980ish)

Snot-nosed faces peered at her through the web of frost on the school bus windows. Were they jeering at her or was she invisible to them? Hard to tell. She had to keep moving. She could barely feel her toes. The moisture of her breath inside her scarf was making her nose and chin sore. She…