Very disappointing development. After asking about the clarinet of my youth for a couple weeks and my mother assuring me that it was here (at her house in Vermillion), it is apparently not. I was fooled into believing that perhaps the saxophone of my brother’s youth was here — to which I replied that I took about 3 lessons one summer and I could learn. It is not here either. All that remains of any sort of middle school band experience is a trumpet. A trumpet! I don’t know how to play the trumpet! Might as well go experiment and make my mother rue the day she promised me a second chance at the clarinet.

What good is your parents’ house if they don’t keep everything you’ve forgotten about and want again in 10 years?