Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Crazy Cruise

My older brother went on a Caribbean cruise last year. And for some reason, he thought that an appropriate carry-on item for his cruise was his trumpet (he plays with a community orchestra). I think he figured that being out of town for a week was no excuse to miss out on practicing. And this didn't seem unusual to him. In fact, when he came back in town and told us about his trip, he turned it into a complaint about someone else.

He was in the middle of telling us about the activities they had on the cruise, and he stopped to say the following:

"You know, there was one crazy guy that almost ruined the whole trip for me. On the third morning, I got up and had breakfast. And then I went back to my room to practice a little bit."
I stopped him at this point and asked him what he was practicing.
"My trumpet."
My brother didn't seem to notice my dumbfounded look, so he continued.
"So it was at least 8:30 when I finished breakfast. So I went back to my room and started practicing. And after a few minutes my phone rang. It was a cruise employee asking me to stop playing my trumpet because it was waking up my neighbors! So this idiot (probably hungover because he got wasted the night before) stopped me from playing because I was waking him up! Can you believe the nerve of that guy?"

And believe me when I tell you that my brother was not lying, being ironic, or trying to be funny. He honestly thought the other guy was the weirdo. So he had to limit his practices to the early afternoon from that point on and keep them under 20 minutes.

The two things that bother me about this should be pretty obvious. First, why wouldn't you know that playing your trumpet in the morning on a cruise ship would disturb others? That seems like such common sense. And second, why such a high level of dedication to a community orchestra? I could almost make an exception for a world-renown trumpet player practicing on a cruise ship. But I would doubt that even a famous trumpeter would bother to practice while he's on vacation on a floating apartment complex. There's no way that playing an instrument is more fun than being on a Caribbean cruise.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Floating apartment complex. Perfect description!

DD said...

Oh, Taylor. There's one in every family. God love 'em anyway.