Good Boys Deserve Favours
A short story from Neil Gaiman's "Adventures in Dream" *
My own children delight in hearing true tales from my childhood: The Time My Father Threatened to Arrest the Traffic Cop, and How I Broke my Sister’s Front Teeth Twice, When I Pretended To Be Twins, and even The Day I Accidentally Killed the Gerbil. I have never told them this story. I would be hard put to tell you quite why not.
When I was nine the school told us that we could pick any musical instrument we wanted. Some boys chose the violin, the clarinet, the oboe. Some chose the timpani, the pianoforte, the viola.
I was not big for my age, and I, alone in the Junior School, elected to play the double-bass, chiefly because I loved the incongruity of the idea. I loved the idea of being a small boy, playing, delighting in, carrying around an instrument much taller than I was.
The double-bass belonged to the school, and I was deeply impressed by it. I learned to bow, although I had little interest in bowing technique, preferring to pluck the huge metal strings by hand. My right index finger was permanently puffed with white blisters until the blisters eventually became calluses.* Twice this time Neil Gaiman has saved me from a Blog's Blog.
My own children delight in hearing true tales from my childhood: The Time My Father Threatened to Arrest the Traffic Cop, and How I Broke my Sister’s Front Teeth Twice, When I Pretended To Be Twins, and even The Day I Accidentally Killed the Gerbil. I have never told them this story. I would be hard put to tell you quite why not.When I was nine the school told us that we could pick any musical instrument we wanted. Some boys chose the violin, the clarinet, the oboe. Some chose the timpani, the pianoforte, the viola.
I was not big for my age, and I, alone in the Junior School, elected to play the double-bass, chiefly because I loved the incongruity of the idea. I loved the idea of being a small boy, playing, delighting in, carrying around an instrument much taller than I was.
The double-bass belonged to the school, and I was deeply impressed by it. I learned to bow, although I had little interest in bowing technique, preferring to pluck the huge metal strings by hand. My right index finger was permanently puffed with white blisters until the blisters eventually became calluses.* Twice this time Neil Gaiman has saved me from a Blog's Blog.
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