Saturday, October 27, 2012

Becoming the Tubanator

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Cami who came to own the title of "Tubateer," after all "Tuba player" has too many syllables and "Tubist" ... well... it's not exactly the classiest title in the world. My private Tuba teacher, whom I shall refer to as Gandalf,  loves this title to the point of referring to it at least once every lesson. I like hearing it myself, so I don't mind. Gandalf has suggested that now that I am in college I should create a new alter ego to work towards.
Gandlalf: "Something Arnold Schwarzenegger-esk..."
Me: "The... Tubanator?"
Gandalf: "Perfect! How do you come up with these so fast?"
I try, I try.
Anyways, up until this past summer I had been playing three-valve and four-valve B flat Tuba, but in college you are supposed to play C Tuba, preferably five-valve for intonation sake. So in the two and a half months of summer I had to forget everything I knew about B flat Tuba and replace it with C Tuba which was a little challenging for me. I also had to incorporate my thumb into my fingerings for my lower register which is great for intonation sake, but still difficult when your hand it used to moving a certain way.
Sorry, I'll skip to the good stuff that you will actually care about now. Thanks for hanging in there!
My hand hurt a little in this process because I was building muscle in my thumb and metacarpals, but I didn't think too much of it. Then, after I started school, it slowly started to get worse until all my knuckles and metacarpals hurt. Suddenly all of the pain seemed to go into my middle knuckle and at this point I was like, (please imagine me saying this in the middle of a field, staring up at the sky, and shaking my fist- to get the full affect of the quote)  "WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?! CAN'T I JUST PLAY MY TUBA IN PEACE?!"
A few days later, this would be last saturday to be exact, the pain went back to being everywhere else in my hand so I decided to take Sunday off and give my hand some time to recover. That seemed to have been a good idea because on Monday my hand didn't really hurt. After I finished practicing, I looked at my hand and it looked a little swollen just below my first finger. I pressed it a little... no pain... I tapped it a little... nothing... I slapped it a little... still nothing. Then I flexed my first finger and thumb *POW!*
Alter Ego attained. Just call me the Tubanator.
In case you didn't notice it in the above picture, I'll point it out for you:
I'm pretty jazzed about this Hulk-hand thing. Not gonna lie.
I still feel like I'm more of a Tubateer than a Tubanator, but maybe it'll grow on me on day.

2 comments:

  1. Oh Lynnie! Good heavens, the Hulk is truly in you, my friend. I'm loving those hands, you little tuba-playing gal you! A mark of honor and bravery.

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  2. Oh my darling little sweetie pie -- how the years have changed you! The Hulk, the Terminator, the Tubinater! Awesome!

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