The Postcard

In my first year of freelancing, I took any gig that was offered. Among the stranger concerts was at a tiny college in Nowheresville, Indiana, on which I played second English horn. The instrumentation was strange because it's rare to have even one English horn in an ensemble, let alone two, but who am I to question Bach?

 

At any rate, the concert turned out great, and once the check cleared, I forgot all about it. Until, that is, the day my roommate walked through the front door with a stack of mail. She began flipping through it, then suddenly shrieked and flung the pile of envelopes across the room. Startled, I asked her what was wrong (thinking there was a bug or a booger or something on one of the bills). She looked at the pile, looked at me, and started laughing hysterically. The eye-watering, gasping-for-air kind of laugh that is reserved for only the funniest of events, which generally does not include parcel posts. I couldn't for the life of me imagine what had caused that kind of reaction... until I began picking up the mail.

 

Tucked neatly between a ComEd bill and a take-out menu, was a picture of ME. Not just any picture, mind you, but a candid of me playing the English horn. On a postcard. Fellow double reed players will be quick to concur that NOBODY looks good while playing the oboe. The English horn only amplifies this unfortunate fact. I gaped at this horrible self-image, dumbfounded, while my roommate giggled helplessly on the floor.

 

Someone clearly thought the picture was worth transferring onto heavy card stock and sending to me, but why? When it finally occurred to me to turn the card over and hide the hideous image, I was stunned to see it was from the tiny college where I had played the month before. Scrawled on the back was a brief note from the concert organizer: "Our photographer captured this image of you. Thought you might enjoy!" Enjoy?!? What was there to enjoy? The harsh way the flash bounced off my translucent-looking skin? The flared nostril? The angry red zit on my first chin, not to mention the two consecutive chins I had as a result of blowing into that unfortunate instrument? I was horrified, and avoided the mailman for months.

Because (and only because) my face had never graced a postcard before, I decided to keep the offensive piece of mail. I shoved it into a box of documents, and promptly tried to erase the image of the macabre greeting card from my memory. And I had largely succeeded... until now. Rummaging through the same box, I found it again all these years later, and gasped in horror, as shocked as I was nearly a decade ago. I can laugh about it now, but am comforted only by the fact that my English horn playing sounds much better than it looks.