I actually learned to play the marimba by accident.  I had gone to the tryouts for twirler at the high school--I was getting ready to enter the ninth grade which at the time was considered high school--freshman.  It was the last year ninth grade was included as high school in Pryor.

I didn't know how to twirl.  Why I thought I could be a twirler, I have no idea.  The band director informed me that I had to be in the band for a year before I could try out anyway.  I just thought you had to be cute!

So I asked him what I could play in the band and he told me that he didn't have any more chairs for woodwinds or reeds and that all the horns positions were filled as well.  But he did have a spot for one single percussionist who could cover a number of instruments Timpani drums, bell lyre, cymbals and marimba. 

The Timpani drums--or kettle drums--are a dual set of drums with the tones controlled by foot pedals.  You have to have a sense of the sound of the key to control the tone.  That was difficult.  You have to hear it--you can't see it.

I said okay.  I had never played any of those instruments.  But I could read music since I played piano--and the marimba had a piano type keyboard.  

The director's wife was a marimba teacher, so I took lessons.  First learning how to roll mallets on a drum, then two mallets in each hand on the marimba, four at a time.  By the end of that year I had become proficient, and people were asking me to play special music on the marimba for civic and other events.

I never learned to twirl.  

But God in his wisdom saw that I learned to do something that was unusual, something I could do at church.  Church doesn't need 81 year old twirlers.