In my junior high physical education class, we had a guest speaker who was on the staff of our city’s AAA baseball team, the Indianapolis Indians. He had brought the team’s catcher with him, who gave us the lowdown on how a catcher signals the pitcher as to what he should throw next. By lowering his right hand between his thighs, where only the pitcher can see it, the catcher signals a fastball, curveball, slider, etc. by the number of fingers he displays.
I couldn’t have been more excited by this speaker, and certainly not because I had much interest in baseball. No, my excitement sprang from the fact that before we had this last-minute special addition, I was to have been tested that day on the parallel bars, which had given me unparalleled humiliation and dangerous slips when I had tried practicing on them all week. Ah, sweet reprieve!
I think the only reason I remember this hand-signaling special guest was that we had another hand-signal speaker the same semester, but this one appeared before a school-wide assembly. The guest was Izler Solomon, the eminent orchestra conductor of our Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. I'm pretty sure that the only reason we were able to snag such a local celebrity was that his son, David, was a classmate.
The great conductor, with his long flowing hair and elegant bearing, had brought a record player. He announced that we were about to hear Tchaikovsky’s famous 1812 Overture. During the first fifteen minutes, he said, we should pretend that his orchestra was there, and he would show us how he would conduct his musicians. He then mounted a raised platform on our cafeteria’s stage, turned his back to us, and began.
I noticed that the thin baton he raised looked exactly like a magic wand. And for the next fifteen minutes, it was indeed magic that he provided with his gracefully fluent and emphatic hand and arm movements that accompanied the powerful classical music. I remember thinking that his hand gestures were as grandiloquent as the baseball catcher’s had been clandestine. The maestro had the rapt attention of junior high school students, a feat I have rarely duplicated during these last fifty years when I have presented to countless school assemblies.
When he finished, he turned to us and explained that his left hand was used specifically to signal to the orchestra members the emotions and expression that he wanted them to coax from their instruments, while his right hand more prosaically guided them toward his chosen speed and beat for the music. He then conducted again the first ten minutes of the music so that we could watch his hands with these added insights. I was captivated.
When he’d finished, the maestro turned back to us again and said: “And now I’d like to ask if one of you would volun-”. Before he could finish, my left hand had shot up, waving with all the same emotion and expression that his left hand had demonstrated earlier with the music. His gestures had been for the noble cause of interpreting Tchaikovsky; mine were for the ignoble cause of showing off.
Up I went onto the stage. I don’t even remember how I did at conducting that RCA Victor record player version of the 1812 Overture. I do remember being self conscious about trying to channel my excitement for music through my awkward arm and hand movements. When I turned back around, Maestro Solomon took his baton and asked my classmates to give me a round of applause. As I returned to my seat, their response gave new meaning to the term “tepid.”
But I didn’t care. I was hooked on standing up in front of an audience. I had already given countless oral reports and been in student plays. I relished the sight of seeing an audience loving what I loved doing. And so, on that day, I eliminated “orchestra conductor” from my list of possible future careers, because I couldn’t stand the thought of having an audience love me, but my not being able to see the love because my back was turned!
And, of course, being a Major League Baseball catcher was also out of the question because (1) I had not one scintilla of athletic talent and (2) I didn’t want to hand-signal my brilliant pitching strategies to the pitcher when only the pitcher himself would see my genius.
Yes, yes, I know—I am a Perfect Preening Peacock and am utterly incorrigible. Please, readers, don’t “incorrige” me.