Ward Talent Show: The Hose

Since I usually work in the evenings, I don't often get the opportunity to attend ward dinners and socials. I also use the "I work evenings" excuse when the activities are held during the day or on the weekends. Sometimes, however, I make an exception to my antisociality and show up late to FHE, or do something crazy like sign up for the ward talent show.

The last time I performed in the ward talent show, I did my animal sound impressions. I don't know what I was thinking, really, doing a seal and a horse and an eagle and all the rest in front of an actual audience, but people still talk about it to this day (not only because the animal noises sound interesting, but also because I look positively ridiculous while I'm making them--I know because Olive's sister photographed me once while I was doing some). The next time the talent show rolled around, I stayed safely in my cave.

Tomorrow, however, is yet another ward talent show, and I foolishly gave my name to the organizers. I debated about what to do--shadow puppets? opera singing? magic tricks?--and finally decided on the hose. By the way, my shadow puppet book is at home in a box in the garage, I don't actually sing opera, and I only know one magic trick, which is a card trick. But I considered those options anyway.

Have you ever seen anyone play the hose? My horn teacher in high school gave me my very own hose once, fitted with a funnel on the end (guess where that hose is now? I'll give you a hint: it involves a box and the garage). It's about the same length as a horn, but it doesn't have any valves or anything. Kids get a real kick out of someone playing the hose during elementary school demonstrations, so why not adults too?

Thus, this evening after work I headed over to Lowe's to pick my hose. They had a LOT of different kinds--I never knew there were so many types of hoses! I looked at them and poked them, but I couldn't tell which one I wanted without trying them out. Unfortunately, the hoses happened to be on the main aisle headed towards the garden area. Blast.

Nevertheless, when the area was pretty clear, I picked up a little 10' hose and placed my lips to the coupling. Yes, I know that's totally gross, but how else am I supposed to play it and hear what it sounds like?

Let me just say that sometimes I amaze even myself. I never really thought that I would have the gumption to try out various hoses in the middle of the hardware store. I'm sure glad I did though, because some of them had a better range than others, and some had a better tone than others. The one I finally decided on was a 25' marine/camper water hose.

I was delighted to find that the funnel Lowe's carried matched the stripe on the hose, and the duct tape came in several different colors, so I could jazz it up a bit:


Looks pretty much like a horn, no?

Anya wasn't so certain about it:



I haven't yet decided what story I'm going to tell or what I'm going to do with it, aside from play "Popcorn." For some reason I feel like it would be fun to play "Popcorn" on the hose. My ward members would laugh, and that's what I love the best about performing, making people laugh.