| The Sage Advice of Freida E.
2002-06-06
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| I had a very strange elementary school music teacher. She always wore loud dresses with gigantic "ethnic" carved wooden necklaces. She had a hairdo not unlike the loud waitress from that "Mel's Diner" TV show. She used to stick out her fat pinky (complete with long glossy nail) and prance around the room saying something like "ta-ta-TEE-TEE-ta" in a hopeless effort to teach us meter. This teacher had a then teenage son. Because of that, she was hip to the popular music of the day. I have many memories of my fifth grade class singing 1985 pop songs. Picture an 11 year old singing "Billie Jean is not my lover. She's just a girl that says that I am the one". Charming. I believe that we even performed that song in France on a school trip. We had silver thermal glove liners that our mothers had stitched sequins on to. Yes, there was moon walking. I was never good at music. I have a horrible voice and almost no instrument playing talent. I'm even known for my horribly bad taste in music. Therefore, it is unlikely that this teacher would stand out in my mind as one of the most influential adults of my childhood. That is because she told me one thing that has since changed my life: Your first thought is likely to be correct. She would say this before each overly difficult music test (even with this advice, I never did well). Even though it didn't do me much good for it's intended purpose, I have successfully applied it to almost everything else in my life. Too often life's problem are best seen in one's peripheral vision: a direct look often makes what should be simple, quite complex. Perhaps I can sum this up by paraphrasing a Doogie Houser episode (I learn from the classics) in which Doogie mistake a case of mumps for an exotic disease: "Don't be too quick to call a horse a zebra. Most likely, it is only a horse".
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