Messages

It was the end of the work day on Friday, time to leave the week behind and focus on the weekend. I sat in my car in the parking lot outside of my office, listening again to the message on my cell phone. The guy who plays the bass drum in one of the Italian bands I belong to had called to say he was at my house, saw two cars in the driveway(my mom's and my uncle's, the latter of which we'd confiscated after his dementia led him to wander off Long Island), and had knocked on the door. Since no one had answered, he was going to leave the bass drum behind the hedge.

Now, there were definitely some key pieces of information missing in that message. I knew we had a parade on Saturday, but didn't know why the bass drummer was leaving the drum with us. Did something come up? Was he planning to take his motorcycle to the job, making it impossible to transport the cumbersome cylinder? The bass drum belonged to the band leader and his son, a snare drummer primarily, and they often dumped the thing on other band members to avoid lugging it on a train, since neither drives. They must have left the drum with this guy over the Winter since our last gig in November, but neglected to inform us to expect us to transport the drum and, perhaps more importantly, to ask us if we could take the drum.

I wasn't headed home on Friday, but rather to a college friend's home, and then out to Queens to meet more college friends for a movie. To make sure that drum wasn't still sitting outside at 2 AM when I got home, I left my parents a message to check behind the hedge, and to ask if there had been any calls from the band leader's son to preface the bass drummer's arrival. My cell buzzed when I was about three minutes away from my friend's house, and I continued driving when I saw it was him. His wife greeted me at the door and thought he was still taking his afterwork nap, but he had just woken up since he'd left me a message. As we headed back West on the expressway and he joked that the beads of sweat on my forehead were caused by his interrogation of me regarding my girlfriend situation or lack thereof, and not because he had his heat cranking, my phone rang to inform me I had a new message, and save me from the inquisition. Sometimes I'll get a voice mail without ever being aware that someone had called in the first place, perhaps when calls come in while I'm out of tower range. In any case, my mom was letting me know that they had gotten my message, and would not have found the bass drum otherwise or known to look for it, since no one else had called. She ended her message with an ominous and grave, “...and I have something else to tell you.” It didn't sound good at all.

I called her back immediately, and my instincts were correct. On their way to my uncle's, a school bus had waved my father in front of it, to allow him to make a left turn. Some impatient idiot behind the bus cut around the other side of it, sideswiping my dad and ripping his left headlight right out of its socket. My parents saw the guy peel into a parking lot, presumably to exchange insurance information, and followed once the light was green and they could complete their turn. But the a**hole turned around in the lot, and sped off in the other direction, never to be seen from again. With no information other than “fat guy or lady in a small bright blue car”, I think my parents will never find the hit and run jerk. They called a police officer, who looked around for their light and claimed not to see it, but my mom thought she saw it in the road when they were on their way. On Tuesday, they'll have to carefully drive the one-eyed car to be assessed by their insurance company. It sucks, but at least no one was hurt.

The movie my friends had chosen, Madea Goes to Jail, was not quite what I was expecting. Sure, there was plenty of that cliché male comedian playing an older, ornery woman slapstick comedy. But it was almost like two movies in one, the comedy acting as a framing mechanism for a more serious drama in which Derek Luke plays an attorney who discovers a childhood friend, played remarkably by Kesha Knight Pulliam, has grown up to be a prostitute and a drug addict. His attempts to help her don't go over too well with his fiancée, and conflict ensues. Ms. Pulliam has come a long way from The Last Dragon and The Cosby Show. Afterwards, some of my friends lamented the limited screentime of the comedy versus the drama, while I liked the dramatic storyline better. They did tell me that the “message movie with a comedy outer shell” was a typical format for Tyler Perry's work, and my curiosity may be piqued enough to check out some more of his movies.

When I got home, I saw the damage to my father's car, the missing light and the torn bumper. I had detoured past the intersection where the accident occurred on my way home from my friend's house, but the light was long gone, not that much would probably have been salvageable anyway. My dad's not ready to resume playing music and doing parades and feasts yet, still getting his strength back after his infection ordeal in January and going for therapy to keep his shoulder moving, but he did come along for the ride in my car on Saturday morning to my parade. We asked the band leader's son why we had the drum, and he told us he would have called himself but his cell phone has been giving him problems, often only working in speaker mode. I silently wondered if keeping the phone in his back pocket and sitting on it might not be the best thing. My dad meanwhile insisted on walking alongside the parade to “test” himself, rather than wait by the car at the end of the parade. I became concerned when I looked over at the sidewalk after one of the songs near the halfway mark and didn't see him. When the parade was over, I prepared to put my horn, and the drum which we got stuck with for another month until the next gig, in my trunk and go look for him. One of the trumpet players spotted him, and he claimed the crowd was too big and delayed him. I had to wonder if a steep hill wasn't part of the problem, and he later admitted to having a touch of the old chest pains. He definitely wouldn't have been ready to walk and play a heavy brass instrument. I think he'll have to skip the next few jobs as well. When your body leaves you a message, it's always best to listen.