Medi will perhaps understand this one best, string player though She is lol. BAck in the Stone Age when I was in high school, I sat first-chair Bass Clarinet my junior year and we were doing the Nutcracker Suite for the Christmas concert. Being first chair, I was naturally assigned the duet with the piccolo during the Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy. All well and good, I was ecstatic to be playing that duet, particularly opposite the best high-school piccolo player in Tennessee, a VERY talented young lady named Tsuya Zimmerman. Unfortunately for me, I had a cold. Last practice before the performance, during the duet I had to sneeze -- really, really bad! I tried heroically to hold it back, but eventually I knew I couldn't, so in desperation I tried to smother it against my mouthpiece. The Bass Clarinet, however, is a reeded instrument, and the results were, well, catastrophic. The sneeze still came out, right through my horn!! And being asthmatic, when it came out it came out HARD, and therefore, LOUD. It produced the most unbelieveable HONK!! you ever heard -- like a dying goose! -- and, worse, completely shattered my last reed. I had to go buy a new one after school, but worse than that was the fact that the director was so upset with me that he sent the part to the clarinet section instead. I didn't give up the instrument, not by a long shot, but to this day I still turn beet-red when I talk about it.... LOL....
