Meet the percussionists

Thomas had an all-day concert affair this past Thursday.  The idea was that kids from all around the city of Flint and other local areas would come in and attend either a 10:30 concert, the 11:30 concert or the 12:30 concert.  Then, there was an evening concert (which is the one this snippet is from).  Between songs (such as the Barber of Seville overture, a John Williams "best of"--including the theme from Jaws, Star Wars ("Star Wars!  Nothing but Star Wars!!") and other various crap movies, and the theme from Lord of the Dance, which features some blindingly fast violining and drumming from Thomas on the snare.  But, despite the fact that I bought a BRAND NEW, state-of-the-art digital video camera for precisely the purpose of uploading videos of Thomas's performances, Simon refuses to upload anything but this small piece, which was a short intro to musical performance.  This one was for percussion, obviously.  After the next song they had a thing about brass instruments, then during the next break the misnamed "woodwind instruments"  (very few still made of wood--the bassoon is about the only one, it seems), then strings and, just before the end of the show, the "and the rest" which included the piano, harp and electric guitar.  After the show, the conductor, Davin, invited anyone interested in learning about a musical instrument up to the stage to try it out.  Thomas, who was sitting at the timpani then, was flooded with about a dozen small, highly energetic "inner city youth" who wanted to bang on the drums as hard as they could.  Glad it wasn't me.

The next day I was getting our taxes finalized, which included processing taxes for both Thomas and Frederick (they both earned just too much money last year), and the lady who works as a receptionist there looked at Thomas's name on the file and said, "Thomas Cushing?  Was he the one playing percussion last night at The Whiting?"  Yes, that was him.  "Well, tell him I thought he was wonderful!"  So I did.  To which Thomas replied, "Don't be ridiculous.  So a person knew my name from the show?!  Nobody bothers to look at a program, memorize the name of someone and then talk about them later."  Thomas always has found truth stranger than fiction.