April 13, 2021 … Tuesday
When I was in fourth grade, many moons ago, I took piano lessons for a little bit.
A little bit being approximately four months. Yeah, a very little bit.
I stopped taking lessons after one balmy (or sticky) Chicago summer night. My brother and I were outside playing “500” (a ball game in the street) and an ambulance came wailing by. We never saw an ambulance in our neighborhood – so, we did what any 9 and 12 year olds would do … we jumped on our bikes and followed it!
Our street was nearly a mile long and ended a house or two past where my piano teacher lived. And that ambulance stopped at her house. I didn’t really care for her – she was about 300 years old and smelled of roses and old fruit. She probably doused herself in some rose cologne to mask the cigarette smell oozing from every pore and article of clothing. The old fruit smell … well, that was all her.
The best part about those four months of lessons was that she had a mini-schnauzer. He was an old thing and would lay across our laps – mine on the bench/hers on a chair beside me. Her thick lensed glasses made her eyes larger than they were … and as she leaned in to see the piano book, she’d teeter a bit too close for (my) comfort … a bit frightening for a 9 year old! But, I loved her dog.
So, when we stopped, huffing and puffing, after biking at break neck speed, chasing said ambulance and realized it was Rita’s house … the thing I was most concerned about was … of course … her dog. I don’t know what happened to the dog … but Rita died. And that ended my piano lesson days. I guess I wasn’t that interested and it wasn’t important enough to find another teacher. Whatever. I can play the two songs I know on the piano quite well!
Unfortunately, one of those songs is “The Campbells are Coming” … a traditional Scottish song from the late 1700’s. It has some fun piratey grunting in it but is mostly hideous and catchy and will stay in your brain for weeks!
Anyway – today I was reading about the Brood X … 17 year cicadas … that will be emerging this year in areas of the country. I missed the emergence in Chicago a few years back. I love cicadas and their singing … it’s such a Summer sound … but when you have millions climbing out of the ground and singing for a month – non-stop – and chewing everything in sight … it’s a little disconcerting … like some new type of horror flick.
At the time of the last emergence of their 17 year cycle, my good friend had a lab who loved cicadas. I mean … she LOVED them. Loved, loved, LOVED them! Or they annoyed the hell out of her. Either way – Frango (a chocolate lab) would stand totally still and then lunge as one flew by and she munch and swallow. And she’d do this all day long … nabbing unsuspecting cicadae out of the humid Chicago summertime air … enjoying a day of free snacking. Until later when she’d puke them all up in a globular, slimy mass of iridescence and wing parts!
So, if you’re in the mid-Atlantic states or the Midwest this summer … get ready. They’re getting ready to pop up and enjoy life above ground again for a month or so!
I’d suggest you get some ear plugs … or start making up some new lyrics to the old Scottish tune … something along the lines of “The Cicadas are Coming … Ho Ro, Ho Ro”!