Rob's Ordeal

Rob has been Thomas's long-suffering percussion teacher for the past three or four years now.  Omid and Thomas can get very silly (they often have their hour-long lessons overlap for 30 minutes so that they can practice duets together and I cannot imagine the extraordinary effort Rob must exercise to refrain from strangling the two of them when they get going.  This past year Rob started up a percussion ensemble, a quintet of percussionists only, which meets for two hours every Friday afternoon.  Thomas and Omid are both in it, as well as three other equally silly percussionists.  Give those five kids mallets and access to drumsets, timpani, stacks and stacks of tom-toms, never mind all the shakers, castanets and other miscellaneous percussion instruments and I can only imagine the madness.  About two weeks ago Rob asked the kids to show up for the next practice in dress clothes so they could have a picture taken for the next FIM catalog.  Naturally, none of the kids remembered so the picture couldn't be taken.  Rob tried a different strategy the following week--he sent out an email to all the parents:  Please send your kid to the next lesson in dress clothes for a picture-taking.  However, this time one of the kids didn't show up--some school conflict.  So Rob emailed again--could we please try again the following week?  Off Thomas went dressed in his finery: purple shirt, purple tie and black pants and shoes.  He came home later--no photo taken.  One kid forgot to dress up.  Later that evening I got another email from Rob:  Parents:  PLEASE remember to have the boys wear dress clothes which means: WHITE shirt, BLACK pants, NECK ties only (!) and DRESS shoes (!).  The tone of the email clearly indicated someone who had reached the end of his rope with these kids.  I told Thomas that his purple shirt was not to be tolerated.  "But Rob was wearing a red shirt!"  Rob isn't going to be in the picture!

So today, prior to Wind Ensemble rehearsal, once again, Thomas set out for a photo session with his fellow percussionists wearing: a WHITE shirt, BLACK dress pants, BLACK dress shoes and a purple necktie (they were allowed choice of neck tie colors).  Here is a picture of the pictures being taken which, according to Simon, was no easy task given how giggly and wiggly the boys were:

When Thomas finally got home I asked him, "So everyone got it all sorted--white shirts, black pants, dress shoes?"  "No," he said, "One kid wore a black shirt.  But Rob doesn't care anymore.  He took the pictures anyway."