Souvenirs d’enfance

I shared this childhood memory with a few friends yesterday and just thinking about it made me happy.
Back when I was in Yamaha Music School, we used to have group classes on Wednesdays. For those of you who are familiar with the ins and outs of YMS, I was in Junior Special Advanced Course when all this happened. Prior to the group class, there’d be an individual class for me.

During the interval between the two classes, as there’d usually be no one in the studio, I would hide behind the piano and hit the bass drum (albeit softly) so that no one would see or hear me. Then when I saw my friends passing by the studio, about to enter at any time, I would put the beaters back in their place and return to my seat. I practically hid out of fear. I didn’t want my mom, nor my teachers to see what I did explicitly – I only wanted to give them hints, at the most. If they didn’t find out about it, that would be good too.

My teachers did not find out about it.

I hinted it to them once, though – it so came to pass that at one point in time, everything was in a mess. We were in Studio 4, and for one of our ensembles, we needed a drum part. The beaters were missing. I jumped and led the teacher to the studio next door – Studio 3 – and fetched them for her. Shows how much I really loved hiding in my corner, doing what I really loved.

Now when I think about this, I begin to wonder what they would’ve said, had they seen or heard me beating the drum all by myself in that lonely corner. Today, that lonely corner in Studio 3, Yamaha Music School, Kelana Jaya, Selangor might be occupied by some other student who is just as fearful as I am of the people around him. Chances are that he might be repeating what I did almost a decade ago… and that he wouldn’t dare tell anyone. But as kids, we wouldn’t know how to explain that each beat of the drum makes our hearts race. Even I didn’t know how to explain it.