Update on last night’s science experiment:

My chef knife is not quite sharp enough nor do I muster quite enough torque to completely sever the end of my thumb.

The good news is last night I was able to finish chopping the potatoes (although not quite as uniformly as before), today Bernie and I were able to install a new all-weather waterer in the Headquarters Pasture, and my typing instructors (Mom and Mr. Abbey) never fully broke me of the habit of using only my right thumb on the space bar, so the new book Stray Murder is still in progress.

Slicing my thumb might have been a sign.

Trego County, Kansas, nine hundred square miles of High Plains, is home to fewer than three thousand humans. And twenty-three thousand cows. We have one town and one school district. Until two years ago, we had no instrumental band in the school. I would have thought resurrecting a band program after so many years would be daunting.

The school hired Mr. Randy Sauer, also known as “Jammin’ Randy”, who is a genius with kids and music. He turned a group of students, most of whom had no prior instrumental experience, into a jazz band! He lent a few tips to our senior son who had taken piano for years but had given it up to focus on academics and running. (He won the state cross country championship, so all that running paid off.) One night, he sat down to play “Great Balls of Fire” without sheet music. Within a couple hours, he had nailed it!

Another stroke of brilliance on Mr. Sauer’s part was inviting community members with band experience to join the basketball pep band. As a percussionist, I gladly volunteered to man the quad-toms (which my even smaller school didn’t have). Which brings me back to the thumb injury.

Last night was the first home game. I begged off because I had been feeling a little puny and didn’t want to share my germs. Thus, I was home making soup instead of drumming.

The moral of the story is never chop potatoes when you could be cheering on the local team.