By Shanta Mali
“Trust me. There’s nothing ladylike about playing the saxophone. You’ll thank me for this some day.”
“What? What does that mean? What?”
My mother might have gone on to explain this supposed correlation between gender identity and playing saxophone in the elementary school band, but she didn’t. I tried again.
“Um, Marney is taking the clarinet. Can I take the clarinet?”
“That’s the small black one Woody Allen plays, right?”
“Right,” I confirmed, despite the fact that I knew Woody Allen only as a nerdy film guy.
“Okay. You can play the clarinet.”
I had no idea that this seemingly innocuous decision would ultimately determine my social status from adolescence through my now-current stage of adulthood, so I played it safe. I backed down. I listened to Marney. I listened to my mother. The next day she came home from work with my brand-new instrument, and I became a clarinet.
The sixth grade is crucial. It is then and there the great divide is determined separating the coolest cool, the smart cool, the smart smart, and of course, the clarinets. This is when each of us is vacuum-sealed into our “perfect” place in the social hierarchy. Clarinets exist somewhere between cool and smart, popular and nerdy, funny and pretty, athletic and frumpy. But really, we are none of the above. We are just clarinets.
The saxophones are the coolest cool. They are what my mother would call “fast.” The first ones to have boyfriends. The first ones to smoke cigarettes and actually inhale. Saxophones copy others’ homework. If a saxophone has a party, and they do, you want to be invited. I mean, look at the famous saxes: Rob Lowe, Bruce Willis, Bill Clinton.
Flutes are the smart, cool girls. They are feminine and pristine. Like the instrument itself, they are thin, delicate, and make soft, high-pitched sounds. Flutes have good posture. You can wear a skirt and not smudge your lipstick while playing the flute. Their parents are married and their mothers, who stay at home, teach their daughters always to maintain their poise, even in band class.
Brass instruments, like trombones and trumpets, are the masculine counterpart to the flutes. Bulky, substantial, rich-sounding instruments for strong, young men. They are hard to carry, and even harder to play. After the two-semester music requirement is fulfilled, trombones and trumpets abandon the band for bigger and better things, like developing their physical prowess on the junior varsity lacrosse team.
Overall, the flutes and the brasses are very good-looking, well-dressed, usually preppy. They make good grades and do not allow anyone to copy off of them. They are the prom king and queen. In college, they join sororities and fraternities. Eventually, they marry each other and live happily ever after in the suburbs.
I can only remember one unintelligent person who played a stringed instrument. Strings are very, very smart and do not mix well outside their group. They are often placed into advanced classes and, therefore, are isolated from the rest of the social galaxy. I don’t think strings even realize what is happening around them, nor do they care.
I belong with the clarinets. We secretly want to be saxophones or flutes, or at least date them. We’re not smart enough to hang out with the strings, and we wouldn’t even try. We’re not cool. We’re kind of nerdy but kind of funny - kind of like Woody Allen. We've seen St. Elmo’s Fire fifteen times. We eat too much junk food and make prank phone calls to our teachers. Sometimes we are lucky enough to get invited to a party because of an older sibling. And sometimes we even go to the party, only to feel awkward and uncomfortable, talking only with other clarinets, wishing we were somewhere else. Of course we can’t admit this, not even to ourselves.
We spend our social careers trying to fit in, convinced that we are somehow missing out on something great that every other instrument has.
Clarinet dating is simple. Once in a while, a girl and boy clarinet will date each other. But, for the most part, the boy clarinets don’t date. Girl clarinets “date” boys from the choir -- a lost cause, as the choir boys are gay. We know it, they know it, but it is not until sophomore year in college that anyone is ready to admit it.
As an adult, I am still a clarinet. On any given Friday night you will most likely find me at a movie, eating way too many carbs, with a fellow clarinet and a boy or two from the choir. After the movie, we usually go for coffee to discuss current affairs, no longer envious of the saxophones lined up at a club across the street. Unfortunately, caller ID has made prank phone calling impractical.
As in all social groups, however, there is crossover and there are exceptions. On the whole, my circle of friends looks more like an orchestra than a Woody Allen convention. I still have a crush on a saxophone. He probably only e-mails with me because he is best friends with my brother (a trombone). But it’s better than nothing.
And I did thank my mom. Had I known then what my life would look like today, I would definitely have chosen the clarinet. The only difference is that I would have been happy about it a lot sooner.
