For Sherry, I purchased a silver charm bracelet, and bought her two charms: a silver pair of pompoms and a silver megaphone.
I was mostly out of money by the time I decided on a present for Kristen. After all, what do you get for the girl that could have whatever she wanted? I talked it over with my parents, and they loaned me some money in order to have the manuscript that I used for the “Hooked on a Feeling” session earlier that year professionally bound. Patty helped me letter the first page, featuring a giant fishhook. Two sterling silver necklaces, each with a two-inch fishhook made of sterling silver, accompanied this. The custom silver work required me to do a lot of running around to be able to get the job done before the holiday.
Before the Christmas concert, Kristen and I found Amy and gave her our present of the sheet music. She looked at it, and then dug through her concert music at the piano and found the copy that I made. That song wasn’t on the schedule, and I was surprised and a bit pleased that Amy brought it with her. Amy looked between the original and the copy that I made for a couple of minutes and finally said, “Thank you. I love them both!”
As the rest of the band started to gather, I presented Toby his trumpet. A round of applause from all of the band members accompanied my presentation, since every one knew how hard Toby worked at his craft. At first, he didn’t want to take it, but we all insisted. To top it off, I presented Toby with a dozen sets of earplugs, “So your parents won’t mind it when you are practicing.” Good-natured laughter and applause accompanied my announcement.
Toby used my trumpet at the concert, and his performance was nearly flawless. I couldn’t have been any prouder of how he sounded if I played his parts myself. Amy’s piano work was markedly improved from her inauspicious start, thanks to her diligent work on the score I wrote for her, and to Kristen’s talented help. She even played a small, eight bar solo during the improv number.
At the end of our performance, we all received a long round of applause, and I startled everybody when I made an unannounced modification to our program. I signaled the letter “L” with my hands to Sam, my bass player, and Derek, who played the drum kit. I then wiggled my fingers at Amy, who looked at me confused. I then mouthed the title of the song to her, and she looked at me as if I was certifiably bonkers.
I ignored Amy’s response, and announced to the audience that there was a special encore. I then signaled to Amy. She looked at me nervously for a second, but she started the bass line when I signaled her with the baton. Sam and Derek picked up the song ”Linus and Lucy“ without missing a beat, either. The three of them practiced this song as a trio a lot during October and November, mostly as an exercise to help Amy learn the jazz riffs. Now, without any warning, I was having the three of them play it in public.
The three played admirably. I looked offstage to where my music teacher was standing. He was open-mouthed in his surprise at my featuring Amy in this way, and that she was performing flawlessly.
The encore brought another long round of applause, shared by the entire band that stood up to cheer the trio. I went back to where Amy was sitting and took her by the hand to stand up. The applause continued as I told her to take her bow. She really deserved it. I felt great as I left the stage.
Kristen met me backstage afterward. She was the only person that knew that I planned to have Amy perform that encore, and she hadn’t let Amy know.
Amy found the two of us backstage, and approached us. She looked at both of us and said, “Thank you.” Kristen moved over and hugged Amy tightly. I avoided doing the same to Amy, knowing her shyness. I was surprised when Amy looked at me and threw her arms around me in a brief hug. “Thank you so much,” she said. “I’ll keep both copies of that song with me forever.”
I was about to leave with Kristen when Mr. Proilet found me. “If I didn’t see Amy playing that song, I never would have believed it, Jim.”
I shrugged. “It wasn’t me, so much. I just figured that the song was one she’d know and would be a good introduction to the rhythm.”
“You’re showing a remarkable talent for somebody your age, Jim,” my teacher said.
“No, Mr. Proilet,” I protested. “Amy did all the hard work.” I gestured toward Kristen, next to me. “Kristen helped her as well; the two of them are close friends and Kristen is surprisingly good on the keyboard as well. I can’t take any credit, really.”
My teacher shook his head, and handed me a wrapped tube. I looked at him curiously, and he said, “Open it!”
I did. Inside was a beautiful conductor’s baton.
“Jim, I have seen a lot of conductors take credit when a performance is great, when it was the orchestra that he was directing that was doing great in spite of the conductor. You are the real thing. Maybe one or two of those students would have played as well without you, but nobody else, including myself, could have pulled off what you did tonight. I had faith in you, which is why I made you people the last set of the evening. It would have been anticlimactic for any of the other students to have followed you.”
I watched as Mr. Proilet walked away, too stunned to respond.
I looked at Kristen, trying to protest that Mr. Proilet was wrong. She anticipated this, and simply reached up and gave me a kiss that lasted a minute or so.
When the kiss ended, there was a polite smattering of applause. All my jazz band students were there, and started to pull the two of us back on stage.
I felt overwhelmed with emotion, and didn’t fully understand what was going on. I let the rest of the band drag me back on-stage, and saw that the house lights were now on. Most of the audience was still there, and almost everybody in the audience was holding up mimeographed sheets of paper on which one word was written: “OOGIE!”
I started hearing the students in the audience chant that name. I looked at Kristen and I could see in her eyes that she knew about this, and might even have been one of the architects. I gave her a quick kiss and finally accepted the applause from the audience with a small bow.
I heard the curtains descend and the students with me pulled the two of us back until we were behind the curtain. It was my first performance as a conductor, and I finally admitted to myself that I guess I did a good job, even if I received quite a lot of help from my talented band members.
Due to their schedules, it took Kristen and I some work to get Patty, Camille, and Wendy together for a holiday snack at the mall. At the food court, I made a formal presentation to the girls of their presents. They all blushed a bright red—which Kristen caught on her camera that she brought with her—when they saw what they received and read their notes.
They got me back, though. Together, the three of them handed me three notes, mimeographed copies of the handouts from the Christmas concert that read, “OOGIE!”
“Good,” I sighed. “Just about five hundred more for me to find before everybody finally forgets that nickname!”
We all had a good-natured laugh at that.
During the week before the vacation, people in the halls, even people I didn’t know, kept saying “Hi, Oogie!” to me.
Learning to like that nickname may take some doing, I thought. However, the people that called me that all smiled at me when they said it. Some people even shook my hand. After it turned out that I was now a minor school celebrity, I decided that there were worse nicknames to have, like “Stinky.”
I found Sherry in History class the day before the Christmas vacation started. I handed her my present, and she seemed shocked. She opened it, and loved the pretty charm bracelet. “Thanks, Oogie!” she said with a giggle after she opened it, right before giving me a tight hug.