Music Theories
This is a little story I reworked a bit this week. I first wrote and published it in the spring of 2023, when we were all still clawing our way out from the deep pandemic. Oof, remember that? Enjoy!
On Wednesday evenings, I pick up my 8 year old daughter from music theory and we often end up out to dinner at Veselka with a delightful pair of sisters from her class and their random dad.
I say “random dad” because at dinner the girls mostly immerse themselves with each other and so the dad and I have time to ourselves, which neither of us particularly wants, not with each other at least. And yet we have unwittingly gone out to dinner together more times this year than I have with any of my best friends.
Sometimes this random dad and I struggle to find our topics. He is of the opinion, and he has this opinion on repeat, that the music theory instruction our kids are receiving is not rigorous enough. Nothing sends me to a separate planet more quickly than his sentiments on this. Because our kids are taught music theory by a joyful, attentive, supremely accomplished and impeccably trained musician, once a week for an hour, for the whopping fee, thanks to various grants, of $75 for the entire year. Not $75/hr. $75 for the year. For the year! In Manhattan!!! Where a coffee is $8!!!!!
Sigh.
Look, it still registers - to me - as a gigantic blessing that Covid has gotten harmless enough for my kids to be in a room with other human beings and a world of new ideas. I haven’t forgotten that we were stuck, more or less, in my living room for about a year and a half, with me showing my children youtube videos of culture. Look, guys, there’s this thing called opera! Look, guys, people can do gymnastics on ice skates! And it is a miracle that my kid or any kid loves music theory. Most grown ups don’t even know what music theory is and my small child gets lost in thoughts about chords. Because of her teacher, she does! The kids make him giggle. He makes them giggle. He has a complicated last name in a foreign language and lets the kids call him Apple Tree! I challenge you to drum up something more charming! But, well, per my dinner companion, it could really be more rigorous.
Recently this random dad regaled me with a story about his favorite doctor of all time, Richard Goldberg. Richard Goldberg was, apparently, great in every sense, attentive, good humored, efficient, but he ended up in jail for accepting bribes from a lab company in a 100 million dollar bribes-for-bloods scheme. Now, with Goldberg in the clinker, this dad was stuck putting himself in the care of a new doctor, who’d already done something so annoying that the dad was seriously thinking about switching docs again.
What - you are wondering - was this very annoying thing?
Well, I took the bait, too. And I will tell you: After the random dad’s first visit, his new doc wrote “gynaecomastia” in his notes.
“Do you know what that is?” the dad asked me. Nope.
Neither did the dad so he googled it. Gynaecomastia means man boobs.
“Gynaecomastia!” random dad said to me, his eyes bulging. Jesus, he said the word 27 times.
In the days following the visit, his body confidence shaken, he surveyed his friends, lifting his sweater up, asking, “Does this look like Gynaecomastia to you?” They all said no. Then he happened to have a trip home to his folks in Pittsburgh, where, he said, there’s a lot of obesity, and he saw man boobs everywhere, a veritable universe of wobbly, googly eyes haunting his wanderings. In his parents’ house, in the privacy of a bathroom, he lifted his own shirt and gazed at his chest - were man boobs developing?
Across his story, a few times, possibly patiently at first but then, I’m sure, not very patiently, I said, “Well did you ask your doctor about it?” The thing is, I was getting kind of irritated. I think many, many men and women get bigger and boobier as they wade deeper into adulthood. I think there can be something wonderful and appealing about husky people and that there is a kind of violence to maintaining youthful tininess. Did I say all that to the random dad? I did not. Mentally I stayed in the back row and watched the movie. Sometimes it’s a whole lot smarter and energy efficient not to engage with human beings when they’re in their stupidities, vanities, cries for attention.
I wasn’t giving him what he expected, which was maybe some kind of feminine reassurance that he had a good body? Or merely the validation that he was telling me a good story? He wasn’t, though. I would know, because the people I choose to spend dinners with, but rarely have the time for, tell great, funny, honest, compelling, weird stories full of subtle insight. He kept on repeating himself. And I kept on saying some version of, You’re lucky you didn’t have to worry about something serious. I elevated it a bit, but not too much, because I didn’t really want to get into the details of, you know, my toddler and her heart surgeries and seizures in ambulances kind of thing: “One of my kids has serious health problems,” I said. “You’re lucky not to have serious health problems.”
Finally, though, he answered my question: he asked his doctor, the one sub par to the one incarcerated, what the noted “gynaecomastia” was all about and the doctor said that he had just notated “gynaecomastia” as a place holder until he got the blood work back and could eliminate a fear of something bigger.
“What was the something bigger?” I said. And this dad said he’d asked his doctor the same question a few times and the doctor repeatedly said, “You don’t have it, so there’s no point in my telling you.”
“Richard Goldberg would have told you,” I said. And this dad said “YES!!!”, and it was maybe the happiest I’d ever seen him, in the glow of some random mom understanding what he’d been through.
Tennis, Anyone?
God, tennis is so fun. For the past six weeks, I’ve been taking group lessons on the outdoor courts in Central Park and afterwards I float home in a tennis fueled reverie. The classes aren’t perfect - they’re expensive, and I have had different coaches every time, some great, some not. But I will tell you what is perfect: Central Park on a pretty day. Do you know how sweet it has been to see new flowers blooming each week when I return? How nice it has been to sit on a bench chatting with tennis people after a class in the shade under a canopy of trees while the sports endorphins course through our systems? I would wager there are more serious places for tennis instruction in NYC - but in terms of setting, I think this is the tops.
I’m not very good. And yet sometimes during my lessons, the tennis know-how returns to my body from when I was on my high school team, like a possession. It’s crazy, having a body: How is that I can not remember vast swaths of my life but my body remembers how to toss a ball in the air with my left hand and swing my racket up and over with my right to whiz the ball over a net into the correct rectangular space? My instructor will be like,“Damn where did that come from,” and I want to be like, “1994.”
Now that I’m reasonably back into the swing of things, I’m hoping in June to find other advanced beginners to hit with. I’d also love to join a doubles game. Please email me if you’re interested! Thanks! lizziesimonemail@gmail.com
Do you guys know about matinee club, where you can dance your ass off from 6-10pm? I’ve been twice and had a ball both times. Their tag line is “Go out. Go wild. Go to bed.” Total friendly vibes all around. Predominantly women in their 30s, 40s and 50s so psyched to be on a dance floor, with some men in the mix psyched to be around so many happy, peaking women.
Paintings by Greg Parma Smith now on view at Hoffman Donahue.
Thank you for reading and thanks especially to my paying subscribers, who generously keep my writing flowing.
I will leave you with this gem. I’m back in my bodaaaay.
xo Lizzie
Thank you for sharing this hilarious and insightful story! Will be giggling about boobiness all day!
Even better the second time!