Giving 100%

This man came to our school today to give an assembly for the music kids about music and life. His name was Tim, and he became a teacher for colleges, but then realized he wanted to speak out to kids on how to be better musicians by comparing musicianship to life. He was an amazing speaker. He told a story of a boy who came to a camp he ran who was just enthusiastic about everything because he had a disorder that he could die from at any time. The kid, when asked why he was always so energetic about life, asked Tim, "If you didn't know if you'd have tomorrow to live, wouldn't you give 100% today?" And that's the thing Tim now lives by and he spreads it to everyone. He connects this to music in that you shouldn't just be like "I'll try tomorrow" because then practice drags on and it never sounds good, since everyone has different days they use this excuse.

Then he told his story about this boy named Benji. Benji was a freshman, sitting alone at marching band camp while everyone else got a drink of water. The drum major, Mark, went to the kid and asked him why he hadn't gotten some water. Benji was terrified of Mark because other boys had beaten up on him, but finally he learned to trust Mark and told him everything. Mark said to him, "You're going to be my little brother for band" (i guess their band had some little brother-big brother system). Then Mark took Benji to the water and gave evil glares at anyone looking onto them with suspiciously mean glares. He called over one of his friends to put suntan lotion on Benji, since he was started to burn up. (at this point, Tim had went in a baby digression about how girls carry a pharmacy in their purses). After practice that day, Mark asked if Benji wanted to go out for a drink, and Benji went and so Mark took him home to a trailer park. Benji was carrying a cornet without a case to his trailer when Mark stopped him and offered Benji his marching band trumpet. Benji couldn't accept it, but Mark convinced him he could have it for marching band. The next day Mark went to pick Benji up from his trailerpark home so that Benji didn't have to walk 11 miles to school. As the school year went on, Benji stalked and followed Mark around, popping up in unwanted places (like the bathroom). Then Benji showed up unexpectedly at Mark's graduation party to return Mark's trumpet and give Mark a gift. (at this point i was crying). Mark said that he wanted Benji to watch his trumpet while he went off to college with his concert trumpet. A couple years later Mark comes back for homecoming weekend and at the homecoming game he sees Benji standing in Mark's old spot, playing a beautiful trumpet solo as drum major for his own senior year. Mark was in awe.

Tim ended the story there in that you have so much of an effect on someone if you're a leader and such, but after his assembly, I went and talked to him and he told me it was a real story. He also told me a little more of it. After Benji had went off to college, he became a brain surgeon. The two boys got out of touch, but later in life, Benji ended up performing brain surgery on Mark, helping Mark's life as Mark did to Benji so many years ago.

I started crying again.

He also had this game going on the whole time. He had 2000 dollars sitting on a table and he said that if had our eye contact the whole time, we would get the 2000 at the end of the assembly. But each time he caught someone not looking, he'd take a bill away (each bill being $100). Well, we ended up losing all of it, but still it was a neat concept. He had a lot of concepts. This was based on the fact that everyone loses if one person isn't paying attention in music classes, because they depended on everyone. You could stop paying attention in every other class and the only person you'd be hurting would be yourself, but with music, your attitude effects the prize of a good sounding band for everyone.

So basically I really liked this guys talk. He's not really a motivational speaker, but I don't know exactly what to call him. It was good. End of story.