Amateur Hour

As the school year wraps up, there is a larger than average number of offspring-related sporting events and plays and concerts than during the rest of the year.  So I’ve spent a good bit of time in bleachers and in the audience watching and listening, which gives me a good bit of time to think, which, if you’ve ever read my articles before, you’ll know is a very dangerous thing.

I’ve made no bones about the fact that I am not and have never been a gifted athlete. For that matter, I’ve never even pretended to be a marginally acceptable athlete, or even a spectator who understands any more than the basic rules of major sports. I will, however, forego false modesty and let you know that I am a pretty good musician, having been, in a former life, a classically trained flutist who has won competitions and earned scholarships and even, after years of practice (ha ha), played on the stages at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. 

The point being, that I am in no way qualified to criticize the technique of the young athletes on the field, but I am qualified to criticize the young musicians.

I know enough about soccer to know that if you are playing Goalie, and you duck when the ball comes at you because it is coming really fast directly at your head, you probably aren’t a great Goalie. I also know that when you kick the ball it is generally a good idea to kick it towards someone or something and not just in a random direction away from the guy in the other colored shirt who is also trying to kick it. Furthermore, I am fully aware that the reason that I hated playing soccer as a kid was because I felt like the whole point of the game was to avoid being kicked in the shins. Anyway, the team my son is on is a recreational team, and the kids who are on it are not really interested in being soccer superstars, and their parents aren’t too pushy or the kids would be on a more competitive team.

There is lots of cheering when things go well, and lots of “Awwwwww” noises when things don’t, and generally speaking you go to a game expecting to watch the kids have fun and try to win but knowing that you aren’t going to have any memorable plays along the way.  In other words, you expect them to stink: these are young kids, and only one in twenty – maybe – is going to be a stand out star. It is fun watching them progress as the season goes on, to watch the team learn to work together and learn to play to each other’s strengths. No one goes to a pre-pubescent sporting event expecting ESPN worthy action. But no one sits in the stands and says, “Man, these kids are horrible!” either.

So how come when we go to the Sharon Elementary School Band (motto: We’re ten!  What do you want from us?) recital or concert or listen to the young folks sing their hearts out during school musicals and other events we all become Simon Cowell and feel the need to rip their performances to shreds? I mean, objectively, I know that the band is, well, “a little pitchy, dawg” but you weren’t in the house when my son first picked up his saxophone and moose all the way from Alaska came trampling through our yard to answer the mating call.

He’s not bad now – he can play recognizable songs, his tone sounds like he is playing an actual musical instrument, and to my mother’s ears, he is indistinguishable from Charlie Parker or Branford Marsalis or Insert Name of Other Famous Saxophone Player Here. 

I cheer on every note he hits correctly (which is more of them every day) in the same way that I cheer on every good play he makes in soccer while living in willful ignorance of the ones he fluffs. He’s come a long way, baby, and the achievement is what I am celebrating. I don’t expect him to go on the road with Bruce Springsteen any time soon – he’s eleven for crying out loud. He’s not supposed to be radio ready any more than his soccer team is ready for the Olympics.

We all have our abilities and inabilities, and in the absence of the ability to do it well, we’re still allowed to have fun at things, and some of us would rather make music badly than play sports badly. If we keep at it and work together we’ll all get better. And if we don’t get better, at least we tried our best. Isn’t that what teams are supposed to teach us?  So what if it is a sports team or a music team? 

As long as we’re out there having a good time, we’ve achieved the purpose. And besides which, I know for an absolute fact that my daughter is the cutest one up on that stage, and if there are any other mothers in the room that might think the same thing about their own children, it is completely irrelevant for my purposes.

In the meantime, I will put on my encouraging face and swat away the flocks that gather while my daughter practices her duck call, I mean, um, oboe, because whether we are learning to make music or learning to score points, we are all just headed for the goal, and hoping against hope it is the right one we are aiming for.