band room / Mr.Seymour

The band room in the middle school was a hidden treasure. The laid back atmosphere, free of teenage angst and the soothing personality sitting in a swivel chair made it perfect for a kid like me. The man sitting in that chair looked like he was hiding beach ball under his shirt and when he stood up he made me feel small, but whenever he talked to me his words were full of wisdom. The first time I walked into the band room was in sixth grade, but it wasn’t eventful enough for me to remember it. I just have dozens of memories of things that happened in it, scattered through the three years of middle school career. Many of these memories include Eric picking his nails and Nate and me having no idea how to play the music. But some of them include Mr. Seymour and how much he taught me even though he was just a band teacher.

In sixth grade I took an immediate liking to him and he liked me and my fellow trombone section because he used to play trombone. At first he was just another teacher that was nice, but over the years he became my friend and every time we talked we learned something new about each other, whether it was sexual innuendo that went right over my head or talking about notes on page or me giving him a Spanish lesson. The one conversation that stays with me occurred on a late spring day of my eighth grade year. By then Mr. Seymour and I had known each other for three years and had several conversations. I used to go up to the band room every morning to say “good morning” to him and hang out in a little office me and my friends had made in the back of the room. I remember walking through the heavy, wooden doors and walking up to him and greeting him. But this morning was different. It was the morning after the senator from Arizona had been shot and then saved by Daniel Hernandez Jr. I had not really paid any attention to it (I was an eighth grader who had “bigger” problems) but he began to talk to me about it. He told me that this event had proven that anyone can be a hero. The Woman’s savior had been a young Hispanic and Mr. Seymour went on to say that it did not matter what skin color you are or what you are, everyone matters and can make a difference. I took this conversation to heart and it is the mantra I live by: anyone can make a difference because your skin color does not affect who you are. I think this conversation had a great impact on me because in middle school I had trouble identifying what I was due to my skin color. Maybe he had picked up on this over the years and that is why he told me this, or it was just a coincidence that that conversation occurred. I think this conversation changed my outlook on life because I learned to accept that I cannot change the color of my skin but I can change the way I act to make a difference. The difference I want to make is to prove that all the stereotypes of Mexicans (or Hispanics in general) are not true.

 

 

 

Read it or be Square

As I sat in the Lenape art room listening to constant chatter and a teacher trying to teach us how to be artists I stared out the gigantic window, which happened to be the only source of light, because I was bored out of my mind. Sadly, I have never understood art, the only things a really remember about art from those days were mixing the pretty colors of the rainbow into a disgusting gray-brown conglomeration of stuff, and my friend Lorenzo somehow going from brown hair to pink hair in a matter of seconds. I also remember we had a project where we had to pick a certain style of painting and then try to recreate that style on a blank canvas. My group chose cubism because we assumed it was going to be easy, “all we have to do is paint squares right?” In order to imitate these painting styles we had to look at examples of those types of paintings. We mainly focused on Pablo Picasso because he was famous for cubism. While it seemed like we looked at thousands of examples, the one I remember the most is his painting called the “Three Musicians.” I remember it only because I didn’t get it, “Those aren’t people,” I said, “They look like something I could make in five seconds.” My naïve mind thought that art was supposed to be a realistic representation of the world, not a conglomeration of random shapes that seemed almost as random as the colored paints I mixed together to make ugly colors. How was my young mind supposed to comprehend that art can be anything and that “good” was just an opinion? The words that I had heard so often, “good,” “great,” “amazing”, and others used to compliment me and my school work could possibly not mean anything at all, maybe they were just someone’s opinion. I think this painting was when I started to realize that abstract thoughts were annoying, why did Picasso have to paint with a weird combination of shapes to depict three musicians? Why not just draw them how they actually looked like? Even today I remain confused how people can understand abstract paintings and stuff and while I can handle trying to understand them, I prefer my world of math and science