Most of the girls I was growing up with were also taking piano lessons.īut this was new. (I came of age when we knew they were called sharps, not hashtags.) I knew the names of some of the major composers and the musical eras to which they belonged.

I’d been taking private piano lessons since second grade and was doing okay with that. The second big change was that I would be having music lessons at school. As a child, it might as well have been eighty.) And it was so far away! What an adventurer I was! (I just mapped the distance from the house I grew up in to that school and am shocked to learn that it’s only eight miles. This was thrilling! I was being transported to and from school in a vehicle not driven by my mom. For the first time, I was getting on a bus and leaving my neighborhood to go to a school miles away. That school year brought two significant changes. I started learning to play the flute in the fifth grade. (The Colonel with his secret blend of eleven herbs and spices had nothing on flute makers.) The manufacturers know how to keep us in a state of breathless longing. They’re made of silver and plated with gold or they’re a proprietary metallurgic combination. Flutes are crafted in sterling silver, Britannia silver, gold of various karats, platinum, and wood. You have your primary flute, your back-up flute, the flute that no longer suits you that you’re trying to sell, your dream flute that you’ll buy if you win the lottery, a low flute you don’t really need and will rarely play but that you covet nevertheless, the impulse-buy flute, the flute on eBay you think you’ve found a deal on that you hope no one else spots, the flute you never knew you wanted until you tried it at a flute convention-all those flutes (and possibly more, if you’re daring enough to go the Craigslist or pawn shop route).Īnd if the flutes themselves were not enough, we also have a dazzling array of materials from which to choose. It’s a story about flutes.įlute people are nodding in understanding and solidarity. Actually, it’s a tale of three flutes with brief appearances by three more flutes. In Dickensian style, it’s a tale of two flutes. It’s about a literal object of my affection-a flute. It’s a big love story, and it’s not about a person. These stories are capped at one hundred words and are about the object of the writer’s affection, sometimes a sibling or child but usually a romantic partner. The New York Times has a feature called Tiny Love Stories.

Artley flute reeds