Does Not Play Well With Others

She probably runs with scissors too!

She came from south of the border and she joined our band. Let's call her Bridge Burner. She had joined and been kicked out of/left in a huff all the bands in her town, so she had to come up our way to find new people to play with. The basic issue with her is that she wants to play with groups, but she wants to go at her own speed (supersonic), style (staccato waltzes), and volume (FORTISSIMO!).

Bridge Burner attempts to play many genres. Our band is a folk band, although she tried to get us to change genres at a rehearsal that led to an email argument with our band's leader, culminating in an email from her that basically said: "#@! off, you #%*ing #@%$!!!" She also had a vicious argument with Hardingfele regarding the health and safety of a cat. Hardingfele told us for years that Bridge Burner was insane, so then she got to say, "I told you so!" (But my rabbits are still smarter than her cats!) (And the hedgehog is smartest of all!)

Bridge Burner also joined and left two symphony orchestras and has a running habit of signing up for a week-long Renaissance music festival, coming the first day, and never showing her face there again. Her pet peeve is playing without using music, but oddly she joined first a folk band and then an ethnic band, both of whose modus operandi were playing by ear. Then she complained about it and in both cases the mutual decision was that it wasn't a good fit, to say the least. The most extreme case of her hatred of playing by ear may well have been when she drove all the way up from her home in another state to join us at a hootenanny, and when she found out we'd be playing simple folk songs, that even Hardingfele's 7-year-old daughter can sing in the key of G, Bridge Burner turned around, got back into her car, and drove back to her home state. (Or maybe planet, it's hard to say.)

So now that she has exhausted her possibilities in this university town, she has had to expand her orbit. The last we heard is that she is driving to the closest big cities to find people to play with. This ought to keep her occupied for awhile, at least, since there are so many groups it will take her a few months (maybe even a year or two) to get on all their bad sides.

Famous Hat (with help from Hardingfele and her daughter "Rockstar Tailor")