NOTE: I am posting this because my husband thought I was a bit hard on Mr. W. So I agreed to drop the picture and the first name in case any of the five people who read this blog or a random person flipping through blogs might happen to know Mr. W. I wouldn't want to be sued for slander or anything.
Mr. W., Gabriel's drum teacher for the past two and a half months, might be prototypical of what you would find a any given music/instrument store around the country. Burned out rocker who never made it big in ANY of the countless bands he has graced his presence with. Slightly chubby, mass of frizzed out hair sticking out from under his baseball cap, and dresses like he never quite matured past the age of fifteen. Mr. W., master of mediocrity with dozens of instruments, but claims his specialty is drums and especially guitar.
All of this I expected. I also expected, and was told, about the problems in teaching someone so young. The short attention span, the fact that some days will be good and some bad. That Gabriel won't retain much from the lesson and it's up to me to get him to practice the tiny pieces of infinite wisdom that Mr. W. has tried to relay in our 30 minutes.
So that is one problem, that the infinite wisdom doesn't seem all that great. He has Gabriel do alot of counting, and moving drumsticks from one drum to another. I'm sure all of that improves coordination. At first he had a music book that he was trying to get Gabriel to follow, but Gabriel didn't get it and now the book is gone. I can tell that Mr. W. is making this up as he goes along. He takes every opportunity to let me know how cool it is that we still have Gabriel in classes, because every other time he started teaching someone this young the parents yanked them back out after a month. He thinks Gabriel is progressing, albeit slowly.
My other problems with Mr. W. stem from his manic depressive behavior and totally inappropriate comments that he throws out here and there. He likes to brag about all of his years of martial arts, and how he sometimes used those skills when raising his stepsons ("I always ask them if they wondered how I could hit them in the face without it hurting - I was trying to teach them something, not hurt them.") He asked me last Monday if we had watched the Summer Slam the night before. And I said, "Isn't that a wrestling match? No, we don't really watch wrestling in our house." I think he only asked me so that he could tell me how important wrestling is in his house. And maybe argue with me about why people hate or don't understand wrestling. The worse thing that happened was when we were going through the week before we lost Molly, and I stupidly told Mr. W. that we were having a rough day at home because our dog was sick. He said, "Growing up in the country we had to learn how to shoot dogs at a young age." And started to tell me some stories on that subject. Luckily Gabriel was already piddling around on the drums so I don't think he heard anything. But the most awful part was that I didn't react to this, the awfulness of it and the total inappropriateness of it, until I was back home telling Jav about it.
I have vowed never to return to Mr. W. at least 4 times.
But the thing is, Gabriel loves his lessons. Mr. W. is a big kid. He makes Gabriel laugh all through the class. He repeats the same corny jokes every week. And Gabriel loves him. And after the music book disappeared, I have to give Mr. W. a little credit for figuring out exactly how to get Gabriel to focus during most of the lesson. Gabriel's reward if all goes well during the first 25 minutes of class is that he gets to jam with Mr. W. while he's playing his guitar for the last five minutes of class. I could try to find another place that gives lessons to a kid his age. I could try to find someonewho's had more experience with getting through to kids. But I wonder if Gabriel would have as much fun as he's having with Mr. W. He keeps wanting to go back for more.
How can anyone compete with a jam session at the end of each lesson?
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