For ‘fun-size’ Ella, it is all about the bass

By Todd Dorman, 24 Hour Dorman

If you ever hope to dissuade my daughter, Ella, from a potentially ill-conceived course of action, never play the size card.

Ella, 10, is among the smallest, if not the smallest, kids in her grade. More than once, she's been mistaken for a super-articulate first-grader. She, forcefully, sets the record straight. That's fifth grade to you.

The other day, I saw her making her way home from school, riding on the shoulders of a classmate, like a sack of sugar.

She's 'fun-size,” as they say in the candy bar industry. But she's got king-size ambition.

Still, last spring, when she informed us of her desire to join the fifth-grade orchestra and band, we had visions of trumpets and flutes, violins and violas. Nice, reasonably sized instruments.

Ella had other ideas. Big ideas.

For band, she demanded a tuba.

Her well-meaning, sensible instructor invoked the size card. Yikes. It was only through artful, Balkans-style diplomacy that a baritone horn became acceptable. Large, but not tuba large. A bullet dodged.

Or so we thought. For orchestra, she wanted a bass.

Yep, a big old stand-up bass. A very, very large instrument.

Her instructors, according to my wife, who was present at instrument-picking, were bemused but receptive. Folks on hand to measure students for instruments, however, balked. A half-base, even a quarter-bass, would be much too large for such a tiny musician.

Ella seethed. I was not there, but I can see the glare, plain as day. It's my mother's glare. A 'who-do-you-think-you-are?” sort of look. Contempt and determination and laser beams. In the car on the way home, she cried, my wife said.

How about a cello instead? No way. It was all about the bass. Or nothing.

Soon, having sent better judgment packing, an eighth-bass was being procured from a local music shop, for a monthly rental fee that I will not share unless forced to do so by a psychiatric inquiry.

So a baritone and a bass it is. Our small, high-pitched sprite has fallen for large, low-rumbling behemoths. Opposites attract, although they have in common a love of volume.

And no truly great love comes without complications. Luckily, she has a rented baritone at home and a school baritone at school. Grab your mouthpiece and go, kid.

The bass is another matter. There's orchestra rehearsal after school on Tuesday, lessons on Wednesday and then rehearsal before school on Thursday. She can use a quarter-bass at school on Tuesday, and maybe on Wednesday, most weeks, but she needs that eighth-bass on Thursday.

So who will pick her up on Thursday afternoon, after choir, with her bass? I can, but I'll need the van.

Wait, choir?

The good news is she's very easy to spot among the kids scattering out of the school building. She's the one with a stuffed backpack hanging on her front and a massive bass on her back. She 'walks” sort of like a penguin carrying a walrus and a polar bear.

As Ella waddles onward, she leaves many looks of amused disbelief in her wake.

But no one who truly knows her should be surprised. She loves music, lives for it.

The kid picks up songs like a sponge, from all over the place. One minute she's belting out Taylor Swift. The next, an old Johnny Mercer tune she heard on satellite radio.

I'm not making this up. Our sugar is so refined.

So it's impossible to discourage her, despite all our bass-hauling, over-scheduled madness. She tells me playing bass in orchestra is great, but she really wants to play jazz. I'd really like to see that.

But, most of all, I don't want to see the glare.

l Comments: (319) 373-0432; todd.dorman@thegazette.com