Glockenspiel

It’s a sunny Friday afternoon. The only class present during the 6th period on this day is the class 3A attending their music lesson. The only person more annoyed than the students about this absurd time slot for a subject this unimportant is the teacher. Mrs. Belone, who is technically not a trained music teacher, had to teach the music lesson for the class 3A this year, because there was a shortage of music teachers in the elementary school. Her being forced to teach a subject she neither knows about nor values as important, in addition to the late school period, makes her overly strict and obnoxious towards the students.

Luckily, the students and the teacher have to endure this mutual hate towards each other for only two more weeks. Then the summer vacation starts and afterwards the current teacher assistant Ms. Cabello will take over the music lessons for this class. She freshly graduated from university and is currently doing her internship at the school. Although she’d have gladly taken over the class since the beginning of the year to spare everyone from their misery, Ms. Belone insisted on showing her the right way to teach. Right as in shout at a student who didn’t know something until he cries, because that’s how life is and as a teacher you have to prepare the kids for that. At least according to Mrs. Belone. Ms. Cabello never really liked her way of teaching, nor did she think it would help the kids in any way. Regardless, there is not much she can do as long as she’s only a teaching assistant.

Ms. Cabello, who briefly got lost in her own thoughts, suddenly got woken up by Mrs. Belone slamming her hand against the desk of a student. ‘How dare you not pay attention to my class!’, she shouted at the student sitting there. The little girl, Penny, was looking out the window and probably daydreaming just as Ms. Cabello was in that moment. Penny was visibly shook and on the verge of tears by the sudden assault of the teacher. After seeing her distraught Mrs. Belone turned around proudly grinning at Ms. Cabello as if she won against that little girl and returning to the front of the classroom. Then she just continued the class, as if nothing happened. Ms. Cabello was disgusted by the actions of the teacher, but she didn’t dare to speak out against her.

Shortly after, the class was over. The students packed their things as soon as the bell rang and so did Mrs. Belone, who even faster than most students took her stuff and ran out. Normally, the teacher had to stay in the classroom and wait until all the students are out so she can lock the classroom door, but, as with most menial tasks in work life, the intern had to this. Ms. Cabello didn’t really mind this, as she’d usually sit there at the teacher’s desk for another half an hour anyway to correct some homework or mark some tests.

After a while, all the students were gone, and it became silent in the classroom. She looked up and noticed that one student was still sitting at her table. It was Penny. She was sitting there silently and looking out the window observing the leaves of the giant tree in the school yard rattling in the wind. Ms. Cabello also watched the leaves for a second getting lost in her own thoughts. Then she snapped back to reality, stood up and walked over to Penny’s desk. ‘Hey Penny, what are you still doing here?’ Penny turned her head towards Ms. Cabello for a second, but then turned it back towards the window without answering. ‘Don’t you want to go home, the weekend started!’ Penny, still looking out the window, shook her head slowly. She didn’t speak to anyone since a few weeks prior. No one really knew what happened, not even the teachers. At some point they just had to deal with the situation and sadly most teachers did so by ignoring her existence. Except of course Mrs. Belone, she picked on Penny even more than the other kids, because she could defend herself even less. ‘You can stay here a little longer if you want to, but you have to go home at some point.’ Penny got visibly sad and her eyes slowly went down from the window to her desk. Ms. Cabello didn’t know why she didn’t want to go home, but there had to be something going on there, that she was afraid of going. She wanted to at least give her some worry-free time, so she thought for a second what they could do. Then she had an idea. She pointed at the door and asked Penny: ‘Do you want to see what’s inside there?’ Penny looked up at her and then followed her finger pointing towards the door. She thought for a second and then slowly nodded her head.

The room was full of instruments laying around. Everything from wind over percussion to stringed instruments could be found here. There was even a grand piano in the corner of the giant room. Penny was amazed seeing all these instruments; most she probably didn’t even know what they were or how they were used. After walking through the room for some time, Ms. Cabello grabbed a pair of bongos and sat down. ‘Want to sit down with me, Penny?’ Penny walked up and sat down next to her, wondering how the small drums would sound like. Ms. Cabello, as a semi-professional percussionist herself, could play most of the percussion instrument in the room to a decent enough level. Probably not good enough to play to an audience, but she could certainly impress a little girl. She started playing a little groove on the bongos and Penny, as expected, was amazed by the simple groovy playing of Ms. Cabello.

‘Do you want to try it yourself Penny?’ She shortly looked at the bongos and then shook her head. ‘Oh okay. Do you want to try another instrument? You can go around and have a look if you want to.’ Penny stood up and started to walk around the room glancing over most instruments. Sometimes she looked at an instrument longer, as if she were thinking about playing it, but then dismissed the idea and went on to the next one.

She suddenly stopped and pointed at something. Ms. Cabello went up to her and looked at the instrument. ‘Ah, you want to play the glockenspiel.’ Penny nodded enthusiastically. ‘Alright, let me just search for a mallet.’ Ms. Cabello went to a bunch of cardboard boxes next to all the percussion instruments, rummaging through the boxes. Because of the sheer number of different instruments in the room finding something specific was very complicated. Ms. Cabello, lucky as always, found the mallets in the third box and didn’t have to search through a dozen other boxes. She went back to Penny who was standing there patiently waiting for Ms. Cabello to come back. She gave her the mallet. Penny looked at it and the glockenspiel back and forth, before turning towards Ms. Cabello looking slightly confused. ‘Oh, you don’t know how to play it, my bad sorry. Do you want me to show you how to play?’ Penny nodded, handing Ms. Cabello the mallet. She went up to the glockenspiel and played a simple melody from the lullaby ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’. Penny was amazed by the sound of the instrument. She took the mallet back and started to hit random bars of the glockenspiel, which resulted in a high-pitched mess of notes. Ms. Cabello praised Penny for quickly learning how to handle the mallet and playing the bars. Penny, however, looked distraught. What she played didn’t even sound close to something that she’d considered good. Especially after listening to the lullaby played by Ms. Cabello and how wonderful that sounded to her. She tried again to play something, trying her hardest to remember which bars Ms. Cabello played previously. But again, she failed, and she looked defeated. Ms. Cabello saw Penny getting distraught and went to the other side of the glockenspiel. ‘Hey, how about this, I’ll show you which bars to hit?’ Penny looked up at her and slowly nodded her head. ‘Here, hit his bar.’ Penny did so. ‘Now this one. Yes, perfect! Now this one.’ Penny followed Ms. Cabello’s finger and played the bars that she pointed at. After a while of practicing the same melody repeatedly, Ms. Cabello tried to show her the right rhythm to the notes.

Penny practiced the glockenspiel melody for some time, looking intensely focused. Meanwhile, Ms. Cabello sat down to the side of Penny and watched her play the melody. Then she had another idea. She stood up and went to the other side of the room to search for another instrument. Penny didn’t even notice Ms. Cabello not being next to her anymore. ‘Hey Penny, do you want to play music together?’ Penny stopped playing and turned around. Ms. Cabello stood there with an acoustic bass in her hand. Although Penny didn’t know what that instrument was, she happily nodded. Ms. Cabello sat down again next to Penny. Even though she was not a bass player herself, she knew the basics of the instrument enough to be able to play simple tunes. ‘Alright, start playing the melody again, I will join you then.’ Penny nodded, turned to the glockenspiel and started playing. After finishing the melody once, Ms. Cabello joined in. The low sound of the bass and the high-pitched sound of the glockenspiel complemented each other, and the entire room was filled with the sound of the two instruments playing simultaneously.

Penny and Ms. Cabello continued playing for a while. Penny was smiling and looked very happy. Ms. Cabello was glad that she could lighten up Penny’s mood and was in turn also smiling and laughing.