Recorders

Mean Judge: “I sentence you to 20 minutes of having two children practice their recorders in your car!”

Me: “Nooooooooo!  Please!  Mercy!  Whip me instead!  Hang me!  Water board me!  Not recorders!  NOT RECORDERRRRS!!!!” 

[Prisoner, foaming at the mouth, is escorted from the chamber.]

The torture instrument known as the recorder (an ironic name in that it has never been recorded without attendant ear pain and screaming), is one of the more popular instruments inflicted upon parents by sadistic music teachers. 

Other dreadful instruments in this category include the Xylophone, Glockenspiel, Messerschmitt, Budweiser, Lubejob, Pomegranate, and Woodblock.  

The recorder, known in its native German as DersqueelingkEarsbleeden, or ‘Annoying Large Whistle’, is a wooden interpretation of what a badger being run over by a five ton truck might sound like. 

The sweet melody produced by these instruments (we really do need a sarcasm font, don’t we?) always brings back memories which I thought had been erased by many years of therapy.

It all started in elementary school, where I was sentenced to several years of musical instruction by my parole officers (or “Parents” as some people refer to them). 

My first music teacher was a charming French woman named Mrs. Boehnert (pronounced Bo-nair). 

Mrs. Boner, as we instantly and maturely called her, was a charming and matronly woman, who we suspected was also deaf as a post and unable to speak English. 

Her favourite (perhaps only) English phrase was “Vey fine!” (very fine).  Everything was “vey fine” no matter what transpired.

Me (raising hand): “Mrs. Boner?  MRS. BONER!  May I please go to the washroom?”

Mrs. Boner: “Vey fine!”

Me (after an hour of wandering the halls, committing various acts of vandalism and truancy): “Mrs. Boner? 
How do I play this recorder thing?”

Mrs. Boner: “Vey fine!”

I graduated from the recorder (from the Latin to “squeak horrifically”) to the clarinet (“play only while drunk or attempting to become so”), to the saxophone (did you know a skillfully loaded saxophone can hold up to twelve cans of beer?). 

I will never forget the sound of our high school band, winning music competitions with sweet melodies like “Overture for Zits,” “Variations on a Theme of Puberty,” and “Concerto for Dorky Blue Uniforms Vey Fine.”

Band tours were common until the government found out.  We would routinely inflict ourselves on unsuspecting communities where families, who had upset the local school in some way, were forced to take us in.    

People not only had to let us stay in their homes (“Back away from my daughter or I’ll play this recorder!”) but also assemble in their gyms and listen to us “perform.”    I suspect they were bribed to do this with large cash grants from the municipal emergency reserve fund.  No one would volunteer to do any of this without coercion of some form. 

These and other warm memories come flooding back to me as I observe my children beginning their musical odysseys. 

I observe only, since I am wearing earplugs.

Hospital Enterprise

In the business world, when you control all aspects of a product, from its raw materials to completed form, it’s called ‘Vertical Integration’.

Creating a problem, and selling the only solution to it at great profit, is what law enforcement calls ‘Racketeering’. Or ‘British Petroleum’. Something like that.

I have to be honest here – creating and operating rackets and other forms of extortion are really, really great if you’re the racketeer/extorter. Allow me to illustrate.

Some time ago I was in the hospital for some repairs. I think it may have been my gall bladder that needed servicing, but it may have been a knee, hamhock, fallopian, spline, camshaft or other piece of wonky anatomy. There’s been a few. An oil change maybe.

First, I was given powerful and quite wonderful medications for several days, or possibly months (can’t remember), in a ward with several other gentlemen who were in various states of disrepair.

Frankly, I had been hoping for a bed in the Slightly Injured Hotties In Need of Frequent Sponge Baths Ward since I was single at the time, but alas.

Anyway, my ward mates were all confined to their beds – inert. I, however, was ert. Blessed with mobility, albeit it of the extremely baked variety, I set about racketeering on my floor since I am an entrepreneur who, even loaded to the eyeballs, can recognize opportunity.

After receiving complaints (and hurled objects) about my loud snoring, I learned that the gift shop on the main floor sold ear plugs for $1 per set. (Confession: I had a crush on the cute volunteer behind the counter. This once again proves the evils of drugs since it later turned out the cutie was in fact a happily married gentleman named Fred who was 74).

I would resell these earplugs to my captive roommates for $5 per pair or more, depending on how much they had in their wallets at the time. In the morning I would confiscate these earplugs while my customer was being medicated or washed or jump-started or whatever, and I would start all over again.

It was awesome!

Oh sure - I got some dirty looks from my clients. There were some who perhaps didn’t like how I counted out the money from their wallets, or maybe it was how I held the baseball bat over their knees. I didn’t take it personally. It was just business.

As my revenues soared I was able to diversify into other black markets. I gained access to the kitchen by (almost) legal means and pilfered extra desserts, such as they were (this was hospital food remember), for auction to the floor’s highest bidder. I also supplied extra apple juice, whiskey, nylons, perfume, explosives, pacemakers, manure, watches and other essential items.

I also sold stuff to the patients.

In business as in life all good things must come to an end, though, and so it was with my hospital enterprise. Two of my ward mates checked out (that may be a poor choice of words) and eventually I went under the knife, emerging from anesthesia to see a competitor staring me in the face, offering certain items for sale at reasonable prices, and what size ears did I have?
I fooled him though. Copious amounts of Demerol meant being so loaded I was rarely conscious so I never heard a darn thing and he had no hold over me. Ha!

I gotta tell ya though, him being a doctor made it really frustrating.

So you see, for-profit health care can exist within the overall health care framework.

You’ve just got to be creative.