Very rarely in the course of teaching do I ever witness a hilarious moment as a complete spectator. One of my students' brothers had a friend over today for the afternoon. Really nice kid but a little high strung.
Both he and the kid brother are about seven years old, and were romping around the house as I conducted the music lesson. As I left, the kid brother and his friend came outside to run around in the yard, which had just fallen into that lovely silent winter darkness that I love in the areas far out of town.
As I was walking to my car I heard a whoop of excitement from the kid brother, who told his friend to stand in front of a pile of parachute material on the front lawn.
Having been by last week to teach a lesson, I recognized this pile as one of those fan-inflated balloons (like the Pontiac dealership will have in front of the store every so often) shaped like a nine-foot snowman.
As I was piling all of my instruments into the car I was startled by a long, high pitched scream from the little friend, who looked like a carbon-copy of the Home Alone kid screaming when I turned around. The kid brother had failed to realize that his friend was deathly afraid of clowns, which, if you're not really paying attention, is exactly what this inflatable thing looked like.
The last I saw of the friend he was tearing down the road as fast as he could go into the night, screaming all the way. Too funny.
