On Saturday, Reid received a [1] glockenspiel as her instrument for this session on [2] Kindermusik. One of the other parents asked what was the difference between a glockenspiel and a xylophone since the difference seemed to be only that the metal bars on the kids’ glockenspiels weren’t painted in primary colours. Shannon shocked us all with her reply: xylophones have wooden bars. All these years we’ve been living a lie! What I’ve been calling a [3] xylophone is actually a [4] metallophone. I shared this revelation with a few of Reid’s former day care teachers and they were equally surprised.

When [5] we were in Quebec City, I read the following on a cup from [6] Starbucks, “When I was young I was misled by flash cards into believing that xylophones and [7] zebras were much more common.”* I feel like I should find the author and tell her that the situation is even worse than she thought. But that might seem a bit extreme and even like stalking ;+) I’ll focus instead on Reid’s mallet-grip and teaching her the “[8] musical alphabet” as Shannon told me I must for homework.

(*[9] The Way I See It #297, written by Amy-Elyse Neer, Starbucks Customer)