Sometime when I was around 12 years old, my music teacher at school asked our class "Who wants to learn to play an instrument?" There were a whole variety of cool and sexy instruments on display. Being a lover of the Pink Panther cartoon theme tune, I quite fancied learning to play the saxophone, so I foolishly raised my hand...
"Wonderful," said my teacher, "we need someone on the trombone!"
Thus it was that I found myself heading home carrying a trombone in a case that was almost as tall as myself.
Time passed (as is its wont) and I gradually mastered "The Beast" to the extent that I somehow found myself a member of the Sheffield Schools Orchestra. What a pain ... we had to meet to rehearse together once a week, and the rehearsal hall was all the way across town (at that time Sheffield was a city of around 400,000 souls).
So after school on Wednesdays, I was to be observed staggering down our road carrying this humongous instrument in its case. At the bottom of the road I caught a bus into town, walked through the city center, and caught a second bus to the rehearsal hall. A couple of hours later I retraced my steps home.
"The Unfortunate Incident" occurred one day while I was returning from such a practice. As the bus approached the bottom of my road, I manhandled the trombone towards the forward exit. Once the bus had stopped, the driver activated the concertina-type door, which promptly opened and trapped my trombone between itself and the driver's cab area.
I looked at the driver and he looked at me, but he made no move to close the door to free my trombone. I tried tugging the case, but it was firmly jammed. I could hear my fellow passengers starting to giggle and chuckle behind me.
In the end I had to put my foot against the front of the bus and use both hands to wrench the case free. I exited with my face glowing red with embarrassment. As the bus pulled away I glanced through the windows and saw men, women, and children with tears of laughter rolling down their cheeks.
The next day at school I strode purposefully up to my music teacher, handed over the trombone, and firmly said: "I want to switch to the trumpet!"
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