Bassoon Camp Finale

Today we picked Thomas up from Bassoon Camp. We arrived at noon, expecting Thomas to meet us at the cafeteria so that we could eat lunch together. After that, the plan was that we would load up the car with his luggage and then head over to the Music Building for a concert. However when we arrived he was in line "for seconds" (having already eaten with a giant gaggle of young bassoonists) and his luggage was already packed, his room was cleared and he had already checked himself out. He then made a vague sort of gesture to us and headed back to his table of teenage woodwinders and we were left by ourselves, completely confused by the bewildering system of not-quite help yourself, not-quite get served cafeteria food options. We finally did figure out how to get food. But by then, Thomas had left us far behind, heading back to the music building with the kids. Eventually we did track him down in the Music Building and force him to reveal a bit of what he has been up to these past few days. Here is a bit of a peek into his secret, double-reed life: Here Thomas sits in the "reed room" showing us where he slaved for hours a day, morning and afternoons, this past week, whittling on bamboo to make reeds. Here is the board that shows various progress and other things that...well, I don't know what it all shows. But Thomas has 1 finished and 6 nearly finished, that much I can see. Here is Thomas and two college counselors, playing in a trio (three other bassoonists finished their trio of pieces just before them--themes from the Harry Potter movie, puh-lease!). These guys played the Rumpole theme, which pleased Simon and me because we just finished watching the whole Rumpole series and every time it started and we listened to the bassooning, one or the other of us would say, "Thomas should play this!" And now he has! (Using, in fact, the one reed he completed.) By the way, I asked Thomas what bassoon seat he was and he said casually, "First." I was impressed and told him so. He shrugged it off. (This is after, if our readers remember, him being too anxious to get out of my car a mere 5 days ago because he was so terrifed of the audition for bassoon seat assignments). He then said, "Well, you have to keep in mind that none of the other kids have the benefit of the FIM." I told HIM to keep in mind that none of the other kids are 13 years old but are 16 or 17 but, to Thomas, age is just a number. On the way home we asked him if he got along with anyone in particular. It seems that everyone there liked Thomas, but Thomas did not particularly like anyone there. "They talked to me and I responded to them." was how he put it. The problem, it seems, was not that they were not nice--they were all very nice--but that they were...silly. They were all into planking and owling. Simon and I are with it enough to know what planking is, but "owling" was new to us-it seems you bug-out your eyes and pretend to be an owl. An innocent enough activity but, I can imagine, the humor would get old pretty quickly for someone like Thomas. There was also a lot of "bassoon humor"--running around, yodeling "baSOOON", and other shenanigans like that, stunts that Thomas found rather inane. And to think he was the youngest by several years. That's the problem with madcap high jinks--they're really just tedious and stupid.