From the time I entered formal schooling, standardized test results indicated that I’d been blessed with above average intelligence, but we all know the inherent flaws of those types of exams. In some ways, my scores may have been accurate; for example, by first grade (in a private Catholic school, no less), I was being shuttled down the hall to a fourth grade classroom for Reading/Writing class. I also seemed to excel in our other ‘core’ subjects of Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies.
But foreign languages and music were entirely different matters. For whatever reason, those areas of my brain just couldn’t locate the light switch. And it wasn’t for a lack of trying. All students were required to take music classes: choir through third grade... recorders (the most basic of wind instruments) in fourth... I even volunteered to play snare drum in the school band during fifth grade, believing that forcing myself to try something way outside my comfort zone might kickstart a dormant talent. But my musical or rhythmic skills weren’t dormant. They were stillborn. Attempts to resuscitate them equated to beating the fossilized skeleton of a long-extinct horse.
Someone stepping on a note here or there during an elementary school band recital is to be expected, especially when that note emerges from a complicated instrument like a violin, saxophone, piano, or tuba. I’d picked the drum because:
a.) of all instruments available, drums appeared the least difficult. I was bolstered in my belief by my parents’ encouragement that I seemed born for the task. It was part of our family lore that my first beloved toy as a toddler was a plastic hammer, which I’d consistently bang on any surface I could find. (How different is a drumstick from a hammer, really?) And,
b.) in my attempts to be a team player, I recognized other classmates were far more musically gifted than I. Mortified by the thought of calling attention to myself as the unmistakably weakest link in our potentially world-renowned public-school orchestra, I picked the one spot from which I figured I could do the least amount of damage. Little did I know...
From our first concert, it was clear that my rhythm-deafness was throwing off everyone else. I couldn’t manage a simple four-beat, even in an otherwise silent auditorium, much less with twenty additional budding musicians trying to play. Our poor music instructor (mistakenly believing that There were no bad music students, only bad music teachers) tried every manner of encouragement to squeeze some sort of musical talent out of my arrhythmic failings, only to finally relent, adopting a Marxian, Spockish1 philosophy. By Christmastime, she’d reduced my responsibilities to a perfunctory role, first confiscating one of my drumsticks, then choosing or rewriting music that required only a handful of quiet taps from the percussion section for the entire song, and finally recruiting a more proficient drummer to play (LOUDLY) alongside me. It also did not pass beyond my notice that the microphones, which had been set up near my drum for the sake of the audience during our first concert, continued to migrate further away with each subsequent performance until finally there were none. “Budget cuts,” she explained with a disappointed shake of her head.
During the final class session in June, our instructor flooded the room with compliments, gushing about how much everyone had grown as musicians since September, exhorting each student to continue playing over the summer and into middle school. She strode around the classroom, offering individual praise and gentle encouragement. Then she stopped in front of me. Her face contorted, and I could feel her wrestling with the diametrically opposed notions of providing positive feedback and crushing someone’s musical dreams. Behind her eyes, I saw sincerity body slam compassion as she nodded to herself with resolve. Stepping closer, she whispered sotto voce, “It’s been... memorable. But maybe you’re good at other things.”
Thus my musical career came to an end, not with a bang but a whimper2.
On the language front, I may have been even less competent, if that were somehow possible. I began taking Spanish classes in second grade. By the time I graduated from high school, I’d accumulated a small reserve of vocabulary words that, given quiet time to focus and think, I could substitute for their English counterparts. But, should an instructor or classmate attempt to engage me in a rapid back-and-forth discussion in Espanol, I was useless, my internal dictionary immediately bursting into flames as I stumbled and stuttered and awkwardly went silent. Rudimentary knowledge of Spanish vocab: check. Functional conversational Spanish: definitely not check.
I don’t know if it was a blessing or a curse, but as I developed a near-addiction to reading, I continued to harvest foreign vocabulary that I’d never be able to make use of in a social exchange. Spanish palabras. French patois. Italian and Latin verbiage. To a much lesser extent, Germanic3 and Arabic phrases. All of these I tucked away in mental storage like the crate containing the Lost Ark, buried beneath increasingly forlorn hopes that they might one day be of some use outside the stolid walls of academia.
In the meantime, however, these words remained arcane puzzle pieces, each with the potential to unlock a grand treasure chest of comprehension, each with its own familiar and perplexing shape and sound, each promising untold riches if only I could manage to crack the cipher. I thrilled in the occasional small triumph when I solved a language mystery (usually when I unraveled how two or three isolated phrases might be related), and in those instances I felt the equal of Sherlock Holmes, decoding some thousand-year old hieroglyphic-based cryptogram. The flood of pride and dopamine that resulted from these private intellectual victories filled me with a sense of wonder and accomplishment, as if I’d been granted acceptance to Nerd Valhalla — trumpets echoing, banners unfurling, a ray of heavenly sunlight streaming through the clouds.
As I grew, it became clear that I was what people called ‘book smart’ — able to retain and recall information in a scholastic setting — but social skills and real-life applications of knowledge remained impossibly elusive.4 Still, I couldn’t bring myself to condemn something just because I was wretched at it. Against all odds, I developed a deep and lasting appreciation for music, foreign language, and dance5. However, I also learned that the world expected me to stay in my lane.
* * * * * *
My family has never been shy about continent-hopping. My parents met in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where my mother had accepted a teaching job right out of college and my father was preparing for a two-year stint in Guinea, West Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer. My brother Jim and sister Annie both studied a year overseas during college. Jim continued to travel abroad so extensively that my close friends began to first jokingly, then more seriously question whether he was moonlighting as a drug mule.
After graduation, Annie disappeared deep into South America for over two years, only further solidifying suspicions about my siblings’ apparent cartel connections.
In the area of international voyaging — as in so many other areas — I was the black sheep of the family. Having learned the hard way hundreds of times that I was ill-equipped and unwelcome for life outside my lane, I avoided even applying for a passport until I was in my early thirties. But my first overseas excursion (to New Zealand for four months in 2010) was such an overwhelmingly positive experience that I instantly became a travel junkie after my first high.
In the summer of 2015, I enrolled in an international tour group that would be crossing multiple borders in Western Europe: England to France to Switzerland. From there, I intended to split off as the tour returned home, backpacking across the landscape of the continent, relying on couches and guest rooms generously offered by the surprisingly large cohort of European friends I’d acquired and on travel arrangements booked by Mandy, my long-suffering, astonishingly considerate girlfriend back in the States.
As our tour prepared to depart from JFK Airport in New York, bound for London’s Heathrow, we all remarked to each other about the market saturation of one particular movie billboard. Ted 2 was scheduled to hit theaters, and most of us were familiar enough with the first film in the franchise to grasp the inside joke on the advertising poster:
“The Thunder Buddies Are Back.”
Long flight to Heathrow. Upon disembarking, the very first poster that greeted us was identical to the one we’d commented on in New York. Our jetlagged senses read this as both unexpected and hilarious (as if we’d imagined English audiences to be too genteel to appreciate that sort oflowbrow humor), and we simply couldn’t stop laughing.
Several days later, when we shot the Chunnel to France, our tour’s running joke took on even more of an international flavor. The billboard was the same, only translated into French. Once more, we collapsed into hysterics over something that really wasn’t all that objectively funny.
Finally we arrived in Zurich, in the German-speaking region of Switzerland, where we saw the oversized advertisement again.
And again it’d been quasi-translated for domestic consumption:
“Die Donner Buddies” something ...
So, obviously, ‘Donner’ meant ‘Thunder’ in German. One more vocab word for the bank. But then my literal, concrete-sequential brain made another unexpected connection.
While everyone else on the tour bus was hooting and howling, rolling in the aisles and
snapping photos for posterity, I remained riveted, awestruck with a sudden burst of linguistic inspiration, decades in the making.
It had been in front of me my whole life, but I’d never thought to question it:
“You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid ...
And THUNDER and LIGHTNING.”
In the heart of Zurich, a place I’d never imagined myself visiting, dopamine and adrenaline coursed through every inch of my being, the trumpets sounding, the banners snapping in the wind, the clouds parting. And as I stood both captivated and victorious, Nerd Valhalla beckoned once again, flinging its gates open wide to the worthy.
1 “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one.” — Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock, Star Trek
2 Daily keyboard practice for over two and a half years in prison likewise failed to spark any musical muse. I guess some people just aren’t meant to play. However, despite my tone- and rhythm-deafness, I’ve remained an enthusiastic air guitarist for decades. Just throw on some Queen or Journey or Bon Jovi or Boston and watch me shred. (BTW, sincere thanks and heartfelt apologies go out to T.S. Eliot for my clumsy pilfering of his legendary line from “The Hollow Men” in this short, transitional sentence.)
3 Most of my experience with German words, unfortunately, came from reading WWII historical accounts. For example, I learned that ‘blitzkrieg’ meant ‘lightning war.’ I further extrapolated that the football term ‘blitz’ meant a lightning-quick attempt to put pressure on the quarterback. So... ‘blitz’ = ‘lightning.’
4 Those of you paying particularly close attention will have noticed that, somewhere between first and fifth grades, I took my talents from private to public school. Well done, you. This move transpired after second grade, when my parents made the executive decision that, regardless of impressive academic achievements, my natural social awkwardness was likely to stunt any potential life opportunities. The best-laid plans ...
5 Okay, yeah. I didn’t mention this one, half from still-smoldering personal shame and half to spare my audience the potentially lethal contagious embarrassment. My ineptitude in the realm of rhythm (previously discussed and admitted to) spilled over into absolutely disastrous results each time I invaded a dance floor. On the extremely rare occasions I could muster the courage to engage in a “rhythmic ceremonial ritual” (phrase uttered by Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown in Back to the Future), my jagged, spasmodic movements quickly had others backing away and setting up hazard cones. Didn’t stop me from becoming occasionally mesmerized by those who were able to do it well, though. | RF
Funny hard to write (at least for me). I can play the drums, but can't write as humorously as Ricky. Well done!