Background Music

Back in the medieval days of my life when there were junior highs instead of middle schools, we girls were forced to take a class called “Home Economics.” Today it would be “Family and Consumer Sciences” or something like that and kids can even take Culinary Studies. How cool is that? But back then, we had to learn to cook things like scrambled eggs and worst of all: we had to learn to sew. The boys were forced to take “Shop.” So, if you were a girl who liked building stuff or a boy who liked to cook, too bad for you.

Our Home Ec teacher, Mrs. McC, appeared to have no lips but really they were there, just pinched in a line across her face. She had white helmet hair and steel gray eyes that won every staredown. She wore pastel cardigans but didn’t put her arms into the sleeves; the sweater was held together with a chain at the top, like a cape. Mrs. McC didn’t like me very much, as I had zero aptitude for the domestic arts.

She sat us down one day and announced that we would be making dresses. But I don’t like dresses… She led us over to the sewing tables and handed out piles of fabric to each of us, along with a Butterick Simplicity pattern. We would all be making the exact same dress in a rainbow of colors and fabric designs. Oh no, oh no, oh no…a dress?! An entire dress?

My green and gold material looked, literally, like pond scum. Everyone else got cool looking fabric. Red and blue, our future high school colors. I wanted that! Or navy and white polka dots, I could swing that. I looked enviously at my friends. They had nice colors and designs and they didn’t looked terrified to try and make an actual dress.

Over the next few weeks, we pinned and cut and stitched our dresses together. Everyone was way ahead of me. Beth’s looked like a beautiful mini version from her mom’s wardrobe. She was already on the hem. My dress pieces would not come together. It was like I had the wrong pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, not matter what I tried.

“You have cut two left sleeves,” Mrs. McC said, the “you imbecile” implied. “Do you have two left arms?”

Of course not, I told her, sotto voce. I had no idea that I had to look out for Right and Left sleeves. Who knew this? Apparently all of my brilliant classmates.

“This is incorrect.” She poked her coral-painted index fingernail at my sad non-dress. As if I hadn’t already gotten that loud and clear.  “You will not be able to model your dress in the Spring Fashion Show. And you will receive an F for the project.”

A gasp from my sewing-table-mates. I have never gotten an F in anything in my life. And my first (and hopefully only) one will be in Home Ec.

“Unless…” one side of the pinchy lips went up a little. Was this a smile? “Unless you play the piano for us. If you are the Fashion Show Musician, you can save your grade.”

I was the only kid I knew still taking piano lessons in 7^th grade. I guess my reputation preceded me. I leapt at the chance to play background music while my friends clomped across the stage in their Paris fashions. I would do anything to redeem myself for the disfigured dress.

Mrs. McC shuffled some papers around in the top drawer of her desk. She pulled out the sheet music for Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on Your Head. “THIS is what you will play for us,” she said, brandishing the music. My heart sank a little. Really? This?

The next class was our dress rehearsal in the auditorium. The shop class had built a runway of sorts leading up to the stage. My classmates would get ready to model their fashion creations while I sat down at the grand piano in my white shirt, navy skirt, and kneesocks. My two-left-sleeved-pond-scum-paisley dress lay in a forgotten heap somewhere in the home ec classroom.

Mrs. McC waved a white handkerchief from the front row. Either this was my cue or she was surrendering. I played the introduction.

 “STOP STOP STOP!!” Mrs McC ran up onstage. She RAN. “This is not a piano show! This is a fashion show! You’re too loud! MUCH TOO LOUD!” In moments, the lid was lowered, the piano wheeled back into the wings and a heap of heavy curtains were piled on top. “NOW PLAY! ONCE AGAIN, LADIES!

After the fashion show which took place on a school night, all the moms crowded around admiring all the dresses. My mother stood awkwardly, until a hairsprayed mom carrying the biggest purse on earth said, “Oh! Your daughter was the piano player? How nice! But I wish she had played Both Sides Now.”

“Burt Bacharach didn’t write that,” I said. “So it wasn’t in the Burt Bacharach Songbook.”

“Oh my. Well,” she said. That purse. What was in there?

“So, I couldn’t have played Both Sides Now.” I wandered away quickly, because even I knew that was a little too snotty.

“You’re so lucky you didn’t have to be in the show,” my friend K said. “You could just hide behind the music.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Yeah.”

Our music teacher, Mrs. R had been standing there the whole time. “You – “ she pointed her pink nail at me, “are going to accompany the glee club this spring. We’ll be singing Both Sides Now.” She smiled – the same hue as her fingernails – and winked at me.