The Tuba Player and the Clarinetist

I've had several requests for the story of The Tuba Player and The Clarinetist, so here you go. (See Musical Memories for the intro to this tale.)

For you to understand OUR story, I need to do a bit of back story.

I'm that girl who always had a boyfriend. I'm a natural born flirt, and I always had someone waiting in the wings when I broke up with the current candidate. I don't mean this harshly or snottily, but I think that it takes me three months to get to know someone. Why else would all my relationships be three months long? My last relationship before moving to Colorado was different, though. Bill was a band nerd like me, and in my math classes, though he was a year older than me. (Not to brag...sheesh, I keep having to say that...but I was ahead in math. I had some wonderful teachers who recognized my nerdyness) He was the first guy that I wasn't ready to leave after three months. He had been my really close friend for two years,but our relationship changed into romance when one night, as I was between boyfriends, he drove me home from somewhere and totally surprised me with a kiss. All was fine and good until Dad announced that we'd be moving to Colorado. In time for my senior year of high school. So my break-up with Bill wasn't one of discontentment, but rather geography.

The Engineer, on the other hand, didn't date. At all. He was already a shy, not-so-big-on-the-people thing engineer at heart, even before he got his official “I'm a nerdy engineer and therefore don't really like hanging out with people, I'd rather play with electrical inventions” card. You really couldn't find two more opposite people. But they're not making it up when they say opposites attract. They're right, big time.

So here I am, not really keen on being in Colorado, not having such a good time coming into a small, private Christian school after having spent my entire academic career in public school. It just didn't feel like school. It's a big shock to go from a class of 250 to a class of 62. And here, the girls wore dresses and heels, not because of a dress code, but because they wanted to. Incomprehensible to me, the jeans a t-shirt girl even back then. And of course I couldn't make it into any of the cliques. I was damaged goods, corrupted by public school. A real heathen. SIGH. I hated it there.

It was weird. I'd never had trouble making friends, but here I did. And even weirder was that the guys all stuck together on one side of the courtyard, and the girls on the other. The guys' lockers were on one end of the hallway, the girls' at the other. I was not used to this sort of segregation. After all, most of my friends had been male. (To this day I still can't stand all the drama that comes with female friendship. Another reason why Best is best. NO DRAMA.) Why weren't any of the girls talking to any of the guys? I knew that there were some long-standing couples, but even they didn't interact at school. What sort of alien planet had I landed on?

So it's in this atmosphere that I spy the tuba player. Hiding behind his tuba. Trish, who sat next to me, said, “Have you seen him? The new guy on the tuba? He's totally HOT.” I looked, when I could. He didn't come out from behind that tuba very often. I completely agreed, however she also shared the info that he didn't date. Many of the girls had asked HIM out with no luck. My chances were slim.

Meanwhile, I had managed to make one friend. A junior named Holly. She was also an outcast like me, so we were kinda friends by process of elimination, and necessity. It turns out that I chose wisely, though, because it was through Holly, and her boyfriend, that I finally got a date with The Tuba Player. But this back story has gotten long, so I leave you for today. Tune in tomorrow for more in the saga.