On Christmas Eve, my former bassoon teacher was featured on the front page of the Beacon Herald, the local newspaper in Stratford.
I remember the giant inflatable penguin, but she seems to have gotten her hands on a bunch of other inflatable decorations since I moved away.
I have a lot of fond memories of bassoon lessons with her. I remember when she taught me to make my own reeds, and the times she would threaten to hit me with knitting needles when I messed up. When I went away to university, she traced the outline of her needles on one page of my orchestral excerpt so that I would remember not to mess up my audition. I also remember the time she smuggled me into the orchestra loft at the Festival Theatre and all the cats that lived with her.
I like to think that much of what I know about teaching I learned from her.
At the end of the second-to-last paragraph, I meant to write, “I also remember all the cats that lived with her, and the time she smuggled me into the orchestra loft at the Festival Theatre.”
The way that it was written the first time, it looks like I’m saying that she smuggled me and all the cats that live with her into the Festival Theatre. That would have been more entertaining, and not entirely out-of-character for her, but that never actually happened.