Drums

Last week I taught beginning drums and percussion for 3-5th graders. I do not play the drums, and the only percussive instrument I have is my rugged Spanish, save for the occasional tapping on the pick guard of my guitar or inadvertently practicing rudiments on the coffee table while waiting for my bank's automated phone system to grace me with my balance.

Inevitably, my experience as a drum teacher has gifted my pedagogical lexicon with a few new phrases. For example:
"Actually, bongos aren't for sitting on."
"No, no! Don't drum on your neighbor."
"Please hold your drumsticks with your hands."

And, my personal favorite:
"Please take your drumsticks out of your eyeballs."

Not to be confused with:
"Please remove the drumsticks from your nostrils/mouth/ears/etc."

There was a kid who apparently thought it felt nice to listen with his drumsticks lightly resting upon his lower eyelids. Every time he blinked, his sticks would rattle. I had terrible visions of him slipping or sneezing. I can't tell you how many times I actually used the phrase, "Please take your drumsticks out of your eyeballs." It got to the point where I made him hand them over while he wasn't drumming.

Don't even ask me how I liked trying to speak over nine kids with drums. My voice has taken quite the beating. I started using body language to instruct them, rather than screaming for three hours, and I used the games that work really well in pre-school when kids are noisy. In the midst of the cacophony, I would whisper, "If you can hear me, set down your sticks," and the one kid who reads lips anyway would stop playing and nudge his buddy, and slowly, one by one, they would all stop playing and look at me with quizzical eyes. "Why are you whispering?" one would ask. "To save my voice," I'd respond. They didn't get it.

I'm still feeling it in my throat this week, and I'm back to the grind of kids with guitars. After screaming over a room full of nine-year-old drummers, acoustic guitars seem like the most serene instrument there is. Except of course for the part about tuning. But. You know what I mean.