Maybe it was walking through the school yard gates that made me grip my bags a bit harder. How many girls had gripped their bag harder, bracing themselves for what awaited them through those gates? The difference was they were all under 10, I was pushing 50.

But I had liquid courage rattling in MY bag…..

A small bottle of champagne, a music stand and a trombone was all I was packing for my first band practice. I had gotten there early, hoping to warm up without too many witnesses.

Philippe, the band leader, was already there preparing the room and setting up the mics. He eagerly handed me my sheet music that he carefully prepared himself. I nodded and started to panic. It was if I was handed a document in Chinese. I couldn’t remember how to read sheet music! I had no clue what the notes were!

Oh, nightmare.. practice was starting in 20 minutes.

I quickly put my horn together and slipped out into the night. I went behind a prefabricated classroom and started to do scales. As discreetly as you can on a slide trombone… Like an elephant trying to blow its nose. Good. Scales. I remember how to play a scale. I’ll impress them with my ability to play 9 notes! Dear Lord, I’m going to die in there.

When I walked back in, the other band members had arrived. They started to take their places, so I slowly gravitated to stand near the banjo player.. hoping it would make me look good..

Luckily for me, their dedicated roadie Eve had played trombone in the past but was too shy to play on her own. So she brought her horn to practice for the first time with me. When I started to practice a scale, she looked at me in wonder and said, wow, can you show me the positions? I could have kissed her.

Everyone took their place and we started with “Monkey Man.” And we stopped after two notes. Philippe cleared his throat and walked over to us. “Fa fa so te do” he sang over and over till Eve and I got it right. Sweat was pouring down my back, trying to play it right.

The band started playing again and Eve and I started to be a bit more confident, we had that fa-fa-so-te-do down pat! Oh shit. There were other notes to play. We looked at each other and just started making up notes..and started dancing. Until Philippe walked over, playing his guitar and gave us the conductor laser eye.

If you have never played in a band, the conductor can yell at you by just raising an eyebrow. Philippe had raised two. We stopped and sheepishly went to the drink table. Philippe stopped the rehearsal and said “the trombones don’t get to drink yet.” At that point, the banjo walked across the room to stand next to the backup singers.

When a banjo abandons you, you know you are in trouble.

Dying a slow and embarrassing death, it was appropriate that the next song was “In the Death Car.” Philippe did his fa-fa-so-te-do trick again for Eve and myself, even though he didn’t seem to be singing it as cheery as Julie Andrews did in the Sound of Music. Eva seemed to play better than myself so I just started faking it, pretending to blow in my horn and move the slide… Just like in high school.

The last song that had the trombone part prepared was “Love Potion number 9.” We limped through that one OK and I was relieved when our bit was finally over. We finally could go to the drink table. I poured a large dose of champagne into a coffee cup and handed it to Eve. “Drink.” She did and then I did. Risky thing to do in flu season but screw it. We survived the death car and we were still ALIVE.