It was graded music exam time in our area last week. It brought its usual collection of wonders.
On a visit to one school last week to rehearse for the exams, I had a session booked with Ben, second on the list. I had finished with the child before him and had gone through to chat to Becky, a staff member I am especially fond of through a prior association with her baby sister, and returned to find Ben waiting for me.
"Ehup Ben" I said.
"Ehup Sir" he returned.
I have never got used to being a, "Sir" but that is another story.
I had a moment of doubt about halfway through our rehearsal. I have a terrible memory for names. I am capable of looking at an 18 year old I have been teaching for 10 years and temporarily forgetting her name. Someone I do not know well? Forget it.
So I said to Ben. "Ben, you really are Ben, aren't you?"
"No. I am Carl," came the impassive reply. This was our second rehearsal and Ben/Carl had barely uttered a word throughout either of them. A little shy, I guessed. Ready smile. Ready laugh. Just nothing to say.
"Sorry." <Pause for thought. followed by explanation of my name memory difficulties> "Tell you what. Agree with me that your name is in fact Ben and you get an extra therapy at the end of our session."
"OK".
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Come the day of the exams and Ben and I were in the warm up room. We played his pieces, then suddenly he started talking. It was awe-inspiring. I swear he did not draw breath for five minutes. He must have circular breathing mastered. Maybe it was a self-defence mechanism in case I renamed him again. 
He is an utterly adorable 12 year old; cute as they come at that age.
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Katie is 15. She could easily win Miss Personality of the Year. I am fairly sure she featured earlier in these pages, as the young lady who forgot to remove the cleaning rod from her flute and thought she had broken it.
We warmed up. The steward came to get Katie who asked to go to the waiting room to get her water bottle. Off she popped and I could not resist. "You do realise that she does not actually possess a water bottle and that she is going to the shop for one?" I said. You should have seen her face until I told her I was only kidding.
Mind, a minute passed with steward and I waiting in the approach to the exam room. "I will go and get her" I announced and popped out to the waiting room. To find Katie in the middle of the room happily holding forth to Emily, her best friend whose exam had preceded hers, and associated rapturous onlooking parties. Katie in full flow is a sight to behold. "Any time this afternoon would be good, sweetheart," I intoned gently.
"Mum just had to go to the car to get it," replied K. Which, of course, was parked up the road and around the corner. We did get to the exam, eventually.
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These exams are intended to help amateur musicians judge their progress. OK, so the upper grades can help with university entrance for all sorts of reasons: they show the ability to work alone and to a deadline; they require that students be able to motivate themselves outside of the school curriculum; they develop problem solving skills. I could go on for a long time, but you get my drift?
The arrival of the exam date is an odd thingy. For months, they are months away. Then suddenly they are only a week away. Where did all those months go? Then suddenly it is tomorrow. Where did all those months go? Then suddenly they are walking into the exam room. Why didn't I practise more over all those months? There is a sense of unreality about the whole thingy.
This is to try to explain why Katie has never been able to escape the exam room in the past, without the help of the examiner. She has struggled helplessly with the door mechanism until the judge has risen from his/her/its desk and released her. Not as daft as it seems - you have to push down one bit and pull another and Katie had only ever met handles you either turn of push down. The steward had always opened the door for us to enter the room, so getting in was easy. It was the final escape that was the problem.
I noticed that the door mechanism to the warm up room was the same, and so coached Katie in the means of escape, and made her practise doing so.
I go in with the candidates and play their pieces with them, then leave. On Katie's return to the warm up room where I was waiting with the next candidate I asked her, "Did you escape smoothly this time?"
"YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS" came the triumphant reply.
That called for a high five and an extra therapy.
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Joel is a typical example of, "the bigger they are, the softer they are". 15 years old, over 6 feet tall and strong enough to stop a stampeding elephant. Graded music exams terrify him.
Joel is a chocoholic. He makes your average teen girl chocoholic look like a prissy-Miss amateur. He had picked out his therapies for after the exam. He was in his usual state of pre-exam bright blue funk, so I said, "I promise you Joel, the only way you can fail is to go in and refuse to play. Perhaps saying, 'Sorry Miss Examiner. Don't feel like playing to day. Here, have a therapy'."
I should have know better. Obviously Joel was only half listening to what I was saying but honed in on the last phrase like a perfectly behaved guided missile. I was not looking at him at the time but was alerted by the rustling of a Roses wrapper. I was just in time to stop him popping it into his mouth. Wouldn't a gob full of Roses have worked wonders for his flute playing?
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