A Funny Idea

Courtesy the teenagers who play bass clarinet at Cedar Park High School who I had the honor of spending my afternoon with:

I was scrounging through the folder of “stand tunes” — tunes a high school marching band plays whilst standing in the stands — and I came across Speak Up Mambo, which I mentioned last night on this blog for being the inspiration for the name of our large, formally dressed, floppy butler, Mambo. Of course, some of the students had already heard this story because every time I see that song, I tell whoever I am around that THAT is the song my CAT was named after! So when I hold up the score to it and start to say, “Hey! Speak Up Mambo! This is the song my cat…” they ended my sentence, “yeah, was named after, WE KNOW ALREADY!!!” This got them started and one of them, (Chris, for Manuel, who I know is reading this) says, “Hey, Mrs. Barnes, when you have kids, you should name your first born Speak Up.” They then proceeded as a group to come up with some crazy classroom situations in which that name would be funny. I couldn’t control myself and I did end up laughing. I hate laughing in front of students when you’re trying to keep them quiet! Especially when something strikes you as being totally hilarious. But Speak Up Barnes is simply a funny name… Reminds me of the man named Spider Web that we met in Virginia!

I guess typing about it now… I can’t capture the funniness of it all, but I tried.