Recital

 I have a little ukulele at my desk I like to pluck at in between meetings or when meetings get boring or when anyone but me is talking. It’s a super fun distraction and I’ve learned timeless hits like “Super Mario Bros Theme” and “Sponge Bob End Credits Theme.”

I also harbor a desire to start the Hamann Family Band and travel coast to coast in our trippy school bus playing state fairs and, um, solving mysteries?

The boys, as you know, have been taking piano lessons for years. Which involves ignoring the piano for 6 days and 23 hours and lying to their instructor for an hour a week. 

Since we are all indoor people now, their instructor suggested a virtual recital. Every kid taped themselves playing a selected work and then they were uploaded…somewhere. Presumably a place where we could watch the other kids’ videos. Hahahahahaha.

Luca was up first. I was cameraman. His attitude, like mine, was “let’s get this knocked out while my next video game is loading.” I pressed play, he played his song once, done. Bing bang boom. 

Elijah was a little tougher. He really wanted it to be perfect. He combed his hair and everything. Granted, his song was more difficult than Luca’s, but he kept getting tripped up at the same part. We could see the little musical bend in the road from a mile away, but every time our piano would careen off and into the ravine.  

5 videos turned to 10 which turned to 20. He became increasingly upset. I have one of the videos here for reference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1Ugqh471IE

I suggested taking a break or running the part a few times or remembering that literally no one is going to watch his recital except mom and me. But every time he would mess up he’d throw himself on the keys or rip at his sweatshirt or toss his sheet music across the room. 

I took the opportunity to work on my cameraman skills. I would zoom in on his fingers or pan across the ivories or slowly follow a tear down his cheek.

After much ado, he made it through. Nailed it. Perfection. He snatched the phone from my hands to see the video.

Now, often times I exaggerate on the blog for comedic effect. But I am being dead honest. 

I did that thing where you press “stop” when you mean “play” and vice versa. Yes, I am a sitcom dad from the 1990s. I am Danny Tanner incarnate. 

Eli burst out laughing. It was the perfect tension breaker and shifted the blame from him to me, where I was happy for it to live. He made it through with no other issues and we uploaded the video into the great expanse of the internet.