Lilly

Little Lilly, although only five years old, already has three extremely unpleasant habits. The first one is: She loves to play the flute, the recorder to be exact. And to be even more precise: the soprano recorder in C.

For people who don't know what to do with the term soprano recorder: it is one of those small, elongated, wooden tubes in which a lot of holes have been drilled crosswise. If you cover all the holes with your fingers, and blow into the instrument at the pointed end of the wooden tube, then, if you do everything correctly, you should hear exactly the tone that is on the piano in the middle, to the left of the two (the two, not the three, o.k.?) black keys, assuming that the piano is well tuned. So, now let's continue... oh you do not know what a piano is.... My God, this is quite simple: it's the small form of that thing which is in almost every church and which is composed of nothing but flutes. That is called an organ. But at the piano, as a mini organ, if you want to make it easy, there are not flutes, but strings like on a guitar. So, a piano is an intermediate thing between an organ and a guitar. What? You want to know what a guitar is? Damn, it's a wooden box with wires on it and that's enough now! Back to Lilly.

The second unpleasant habit: Lilly plays this recorder in a way that is hardly bearable for the ear, namely consistently and with great persistence wrong.

As if these two habits, especially in combination, weren't bad enough: there is a third, the most unpleasant of the three. Lilly easily gets flatulence. The slightest wrong bite and the most disgusting things happen.

Lilly McCoy, that is her full name, was on the train with her parents. The small family wanted to visit their grandparents in Des Moines. A long journey, from Denver via Mc Cool, Hartings, Lincoln, Omaha and Council Bloffs. Father McCoy had, as always, taken care of the tickets and seat reservations while mother did the packing. Little Lilly played the famous song of the two flies in buttermilk on her soprano recorder until shortly before departure. She could not yet play another one. (If you don't know this song, just ask one of the big people for"Skip to my lou". Of course, it's best if you let them sing it for you right away, but I have to warn you, because most adults sing quite badly). If you considered the matter in a sufficiently lenient way, then you could think that it actually sounded like"skip to my lou". Otherwise, Lilly preferred the great art of improvisation (a terribly complicated word) because she had more freedom there. Improvisation is just putting together the notes that seem to fit, so you don't have to practice or memorize any songs. Unfortunately, even this form of music-making does not give you all t