The Sound of Music

In elementary school our vocal music teacher visited one classroom at a time. She toted a box of rhythm instruments with her. For a class of 30 students the box contained four or five tambourines, 25 sets of sticks and one triangle. No one wanted to just keep time to the music with the sticks. Everyone wanted at least a tambourine. Whoever received the triangle had hit the jackpot. Nothing sounded like the triangle. Everything else sounded like everyone else.

I don't remember playing the triangle. Every time she came with the box I would pray, or something like a prayer, that she would hand the triangle to me, then my friends would march in awe as I led the class around the room clinking my high-pitched tones. But it didn't happen and most often a classmate with long curly hair named Elaine was given the triangle because she took piano lessons and the teacher must have thought she had a higher level of musical ability than the rest of us.

Little wonder then, last summer I coerced a local high school junior, a drummer in the church worship band, to give me percussion lessons. Not the drum set, but the fun things one picks up and hits and other noisy things that one shakes to the beat of the music. It took a while to convince him I was serious.

Months later, much to my terror I saw my name listed as a percussionist for the Easter service at a local stadium where 7000 people were expected.

My biggest delight came when I picked up the music for the service to find that my percussion piece included, yes it really did, a selection with triangle. I was ecstatic.

That morning the band director was on the stadium floor in front of a forty piece orchestra. I was up on the stage, a hundred yards or so away and above him, behind the percussion stand. How would I make my little triangle heard over that distance and throughout the stadium?

On the downbeat the music started. Counting carefully it came to my big triangle debut. I held the tiny instrument so it touched the microphone. I hauled back on the striker and hit the bar head on. I saw the look of surprise and delight on the director's face far down on floor. He had heard it. Everyone in the place could hear it.

I had played the triangle.

What's my point? Never give up on your dreams. Never believe that your dreams are minor or silly or don't account for much. And never think you are past the place in life where a dream can come true.

That's what I think about it.