Trumpet

My wife was in California for a week, so I turned on the TV and watched all the stuff I'd been hoarding - a sickening amount sports, including UFC - which isn't really allowed when she's around unless I wanna put up with incessant eye-rolling and her sleeping on her side facing the wall for three nights.

Then I watched deliciously nauseating political and historical documentaries, including one on Caligula that everyone should eventually see. Or not.

The spoiled narcissistic, hedonistic, crybaby, poor-little-rich-kid brat is such a classic Cake-Eating-Pretty-Boy-Weakling-Bully, it's sorta sad that his cliché and caricatured life continues to be of interest, still. I'm chagrined to admit I'm one of the chronically interested.

Indeed, when the credits rolled at the end of the thing, I was more than a little ashamed of myself for giving the loser the benefit of my attention, all these 1,980 years later.

Meanwhile, there's actual Good People that fall over in their living rooms and driveways and in the parking lot of Walmart and end up with people that used to know them, saying:

"Wow. I can't believe he died ... " and "She was my favorite teacher ... " and "He really had a way with words ...."

And no books or documentaries get written and the people reading the obits move on, cuz they're not yet dead and figure no documentaries will be written about them, either, so their observations about the recently dead are likely to live only as long as themselves ....

And I ate andouille sausage and eggs for breakfast, and listened to all the music I listened to in college and took naps and didn't make the bed and didn't shower and still pulled it off like I was an actual adult.

And then I pulled out my trumpet, dragging the case out from under the bed. And I played the thing and it was horrible and embarrassing, even to myself, all alone in my otherwise quiet house.

It felt like it felt to have just watched the Caligula documentary.

You know you're deservedly embarrassed when you're all alone and still embarrassed.

Un-crazy embarrassment necessitates an audience.

I used to be good.

On Thursday, May 26, 1983, me, Jeff, Zane, Ray, Marden, Panger, Elliot - I think Kathy Smalley and another sax player with big, blonde hair and a frightful bank of trombone players and John Hintz on bass took the CHS stage as the Jazz Band and lit it up. In one of the finest teaching moments I've ever had the benefit of receiving, Zane pulled me aside, knowing I wasn't the best musician (Jeff was, by far), but knowing I was a clear, loud, high-noted force to be reckoned with, said:

"Parnell. Just play well. When you do, they do."

He may have been playing me, but I don't think so. Zane knew how to play and knew how to not.

Anyway, we played like maniacs and went to Bridgeman's after and, eventually, I fell asleep with Clearasil on my face and woke up the next morning at 7:28 a.m. like I always did and ate cantaloupe, shredded wheat sprinkled with oat bran and went to school and didn't become a legend or famous or documentary worthy that day or any day thereafter.

But I didn't become Caligula, either.

But there's still time. So embarrassing.

Parnell Thill is who you think he is. He's an award-winning columnist and known close observer. Send him your thoughts at [email protected]