The Cone of Silence

I look forward to taking my (almost) 14 year old son to his trumpet lesson for a number of reasons – I enjoy hearing my son and his teacher play, his teacher is an interesting guy to talk to and then there’s the fact that there is no cell phone reception for either my personal phone or my work phone while I’m there. Thirty minutes of pure un-reachable bliss. I can listen to them play while I read. I can nod off and take a short nap. I can take the laptop along and work on what I want to work on off-line. With all the family things going on, it really is about the only half hour I get to myself besides my bike ride to and from work.

So, with our weather this last week, I’ve not been able to get the bike out of the garage; hence, I was looking forward to tonight’s lesson. I had my copy of David McCullough’s 1776 ready to go when I realized that there would be no one at home to be with my youngest. Plan B: I asked the youngest to come with me and he told me he needed to go over some facts for a report he is doing on Omar Bradley and needed my help.

Don’t feel bad for me – we had a blast and I learned some very interesting things about Bradley and his second wife, Kitty. So it all worked out and I had more fun than I probably would have on my own. There’ll always be another time that I can sit and read by myself. I won’t always have the chance to help out a child that really wants Dad to spend some time helping them…