ABB-AB

01.27.2004 - 6:15 p.m.

Sometimes I hate waxing political on here, cuz I get too fired up, and this is where I come to wax humorous, in that vaguely androgynous way that's oh so funny.

But you wax poli too!

So please, in this election year, come for the funny, and then stay for the political discourse.

***

There's this albino woman with Crystal Gayle-length hair that rides my bus. She wears those sneakers that look like the heel is attached by a spring and she plays solitaire on her palm pilot with it pressed to her nose. Sadly, I only wish I were exaggerating for effect.

The last few days I've seen her with a large, folder sized book pressed to her face. She has a childish smile as her eyes dart furiously around the page. She had such visible joy from whatever she was reading that I've been dying to know what it is - I wanna read it to.

I finally sat where I could get a look at what she was reading......

....sheet music. Notes. Black dots and bars strewn about the page - some plain and straight, some elegant and crooked. And she was loving it.

She was reading it and laughing, as if privy to some secret joke by the composer, maybe due to a particularly witty acciaccatura placement or a surprise tierce de picardi. Beats me. I quit band in the 7th grade - but damn I could play the hell out of the Love Theme from Top Gun on the saxophone. Drove the girls wild. I mean really, the saxophone? It's practically the sexophone. And what 5th grader and future frat-boy joins the band for anything other than the girlies? Am I right? *crickets*

Anyhoo - this woman on my bus reads sheet music. For leisure. I doubt I can even read a lick of it anymore - I'm kinda jealous. I think if I try real hard and think back to those days I may remember some of the fingering. What?! Oh please, the saxophone fingering, you dirty little monkeys. (Oh band humor. Gotta love it. That's another reason I joined.) But seriously, I think if my life depended on it - I mean really depended on it, like Osama bin Laden had me pinned down and was pointing a jet at my head, then I think I could still bust out a wicked Hot Cross Buns on the recorder. I think I may still retain that life saving skill from catholic school. Sister Rose would be so proud.

(*snicker* I said Hot Cross Buns)

I may have only done three years at catholic school, but the pay-off was priceless. To this day I'm able to toil away diligently in my cube, safe in the knowledge that if anything ever went catastrophically wrong in the building- catholic school will save me.

I'll quickly turn my cube into a triage point for the wounded, as I feverishly go to work applying my ingrained knowledge of wrapping turnakits made of plaid ties and jumpers in ungodly greens and blues, while placating those in shock with a wistful hymn on the recorder and a detailed overview on navigating the tricky card catalog. When we're all finally saved, the remnants of my angelic alter-boy voice will lead us all in a rousing rendition of Go Tell It On The Mountain. It's a little known fact that amishboy's got a wicked falsetto.

out to pasture - to the barn raising