In my hometown of Sackville, N.B., they'd have a musical festival every March. My mother told me that at one festival event she heard someone playing a piano and said to a stranger, "That piano's really out of tune!" It turned out that she was talking to the piano tuner! (That's what the English call "dropping a brick.")
I remember that in Grade 2 my class was going to sing a song in some competition at the festival. (I don't remember what the song was.) But on the day when we were going to sing, there was a bomb scare! They spent the whole day searching the place for a bomb, and we didn't get to sing our song. Some teenager went to Juvenile Court for causing the scare. That's when I learned that life isn't fair.
One year I sang in a competition, with a song about an aspiring sailor, with the line, "I'll bring you a parrot in a cage when I sail my ship back home!" The winner had a way better song than mine. It went, "We are the King's men, hale and hearty, marching to meet our Bonapartey!"
I also played piano in a few competitions. But I didn't really care for that: the adjudicator's criticisms would get to me. But my sister Moira was a good pianist and competed in festivals in Saint John and Halifax as well as Sackville.
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