Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Who wants to hear a song?


We loaded all the gear in the rented Chrysler Town and Country: the water bottles, sunscreen, insect repellant, diarrhea medicine and more water bottles.

And we set out on the hour drive from the pristine, seaweed-infested beaches of Tulum, inland towards the jungle, and the ancient homeland of the Mayans and their majestic stone pyramids.

We tried to get our two teenage daughters excited about the prospect of seeing feral pigs, howler monkeys and live iguanas. Not to mention the experience of stepping in the same footprints as the Mayan kings who for centuries ruled the Yucatan peninsula.

But along the way, their eyes were caught by roadside stands displaying colorful flapping sarapes and huge dream catchers, so naturally we had to pull the car over and view the trinkets.

And that's when we spotted a whole table of foot long ceramic...skin flutes.

There was much giggling.

Naturally.

At PS 92 in Queens, NY, I, along with the entire third grade was taught to play the Recorder Flute. I believe it was part of the mandatory New York State curriculum, when music and art mattered.

We rehearsed and practiced that damn Recorder, I don't think it ever left my system. The same way I can still pick a book of Hebrew prayers and start reading the divine gibberish.

I thought about picking up one of the "flutes" and knocking out a few chords of Red River Valley.

But then I saw my daughters had their iPhones ready to go. And I didn't want to end up the next Instagram sensation.

Instead, I sprang for few dreamcatchers.




1 comment:

george tannenbaum said...

At least they were circumcised.