Losing My Grip

Disclaimer: I use "at" and "to" throughout this post grammatically incorrectly. I could have made liberal use of "at which" or "to which" instead of ending a sentence or a phrase  with "at" and "to", but I didn't bother.  Nonetheless, I think you'll be able to follow the story.

Over my lifetime I have been proficient at and then later totally incapable of performing certain tasks. I'm going to share but a few examples. Most, but not all, of these examples come from my world of music.

In the sixth grade  I picked up a trombone and learned to play it.  I never had any formal lessons and I don't remember who taught me to play. I guess I taught myself.  The band in my high school was, as you might assume, made up of high school students, grade nine through twelve.  Again I don't remember why but the band director asked me to audition for the Enterprise High School Marching Band at the end of the seventh grade.  I auditioned and found myself a member of the band in my eighth grade year. So instead of "marching" four years I "marched" five. But you had probably already done the math. At my high school graduation I was sitting in a fog (something I'm still very proficient at) when the person beside me said, "Go up there."  "What?", I asked.  "They just called your name. Go up there."  She could have easily punked me but I went to the front, shook my principal's hand and he gave me a trophy. When I got back to my seat, it read "The John Philip Sousa Outstanding Band Member Award."   Except for part of one semester in college, I've never picked up a trombone again.  Now I can hardly get a sound from it.

I remember the first time I produced a sound by blowing my fists. There are several techniques including interlacing my fingers and blowing through the mouthpiece provided by my thumbs.  But the technique I became quite proficient at was wrapping the four fingers of my right hand inside of the grip of my left hand.  Now as I blew thorough my thumbs and produced a sound I could wiggle the fingers of my left hand in the air to produce specific notes.  In other words I could play songs. I got so good at this that I found myself standing on a stage in front of about 700 young people playing The Star Spangled Banner on my fists.  Think about the range of that song and be fairly amazed at that feat. At the end I even blasted  up to that high note on "brave" that singers often pop up to when it's high enough as it is.  Much applause ensued.  I can now make a sound but that's about all.

Perhaps the most incredible thing I ever learned to do in music was something I was required to do in graduate school.  As a part of my "piano proficiency," I had to play all the major and minor scales on the piano. The thing is, I had to play all of these scales up and down two octaves using the proper fingering. What I want you to be amazed at is that the fingering is completely different for the left and right hands. Also the fingering changed as I descended from what it was when I ascended. So I was turning my thumbs and fingers under at miscellaneous intervals through the exercise. I accomplished it, made my A and never did it again.  Wish I'd kept it up, but I didn't. I play the piano, but with whatever fingering comes the easiest. When I consider how useful that skill would be on the keyboard, it grieves me. But not as much as not being able to play my fists.

But yesterday I found out that I am no longer able to do something that used to come very easily. Until I found out yesterday that I could no longer do it, I had no idea that I had somehow lost this ability.  Until recently when I ate sunflower seeds I was able to put a multitude of them in my mouth, slide them into my jaw with my tongue, retrieve them one by one with my tongue, crack it open with my teeth. separate the shell from the kernel with my tongue, eat the kernel and spit out the shell all the time keeping the others in reserve in my jaw.  This ability especially came in  handy at baseball games.  Baseball happens very quickly and if you look down to get another seed you can miss the best play of the game. Yesterday when I tried to do this the shell and the kernel were hopelessly mixed together and I had to spit out the whole thing. The best I could do was to put three or four sunflower seeds in my mouth and accomplish all of the above before I had to reload and do it again. These seeds happen to be FritoLay Ranch Sunflower Seeds. The package says "Naturally and Artificially Flavored."  Is there some "natural" substance called "ranch"? Anyway I like them.

So what is something I used to be able to do that I'm still good at?  This morning I learned that I am still good at cuddling newborn babies.  He slept most of the time, woke up once, looked up at me and decided he was safe enough and immediately went back to sleep.  He had no idea I could no longer play my fists or negotiate a mouthful of sunflower seeds.  And I doubt he would have lost much respect if he had known. While I was still holding this beautiful twenty-four day old baby boy his new foster Mom appeared to take him home.  I carefully handed him to  her as she saw him and held him for the first time.  Sometimes when you say "goodbye", it means goodbye.

As of this writing, I still can't play the trombone. I can't play a tune on my fists.  I can play up and down the C major scale two octaves using the proper fingering, but that's about all.   I can still provide love and comfort for newborn babies, for a few hours at a time.. After a little more than twenty-four hours, I can negotiate about ten sunflower seeds in my mouth at a time. I feel pretty good about this. And there''s always tomorrow.

When I wrote "grammatically incorrectly" that didn't sound right either as I always read it in the context of "grammatically incorrect" but in that sentence it seemed okay.  Is there really any proper use of "grammatically incorrectly"? But I never was an English teacher so that is not a skill I ever lost.