If the world came crashing down around me, the only item I would grab is my cello. The 5th grade brought many new things for me. Each child was able to take a music class if they wanted. Choir was what everyone else wanted to do, and band was a close second. Nobody took a chance on orchestra. Since I’m an odd individual, I went against what everyone else did and chose to be in the orchestra. With my father being Irish, he encouraged me to play the violin (or fiddle, as he called it). Being the rebellious ten year old I was, I ignored his advice and chose cello. Not too big, not too small. Just right for me.
It was a whole new world for me. I had never picked up an instrument before, and half of the kids in my class had been taking private lessons since they were five. I had begun to think I was in over my head. But I persisted with the cello, because I never back down from a challenge. The instrument grew on me, slowly becoming like a part of my body. Arms, legs, feet, hands, cello. I was enthralled with the four-stringed, wooden instrument. The sound was like no other that I had heard before. Creating music with just a bundle of horsehair and four metal wires gave me jubilation that I had never found anywhere else. To this day, it still does. Eight years later and a senior in highschool, I live for my craft. I currently am in the orchestra at my school as a third stand cellist.
There were times I wanted to put it down. There were times I thought it was dumb, because the choir kids were the “cool” ones at my school. But something about the hefty wooden apparatus stuck with me, making me never want to part with it. Soon, my love for it was seen by my brother. He started at 5th grade just as I did, and now we play together in the Bay Port High School Orchestra. My cello has seen Green Bay, Chicago, and Washington D.C. Stages such as the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Chicago Symphony Center. Each step of my life, my cello has been there. Sometimes when I’m upset, I pull it out of the case and sit on my bed with it. I make up tunes, play ones from memory, or just bow a few notes. The deep, rich sound is calming and soothing.
So if I woke up from a deep sleep to find my house had burst to flames, I would leap from my bed and grab my cello. Of course I would get my family out too, but the only material item I would worry about would be my precious cello. It is not only a hunk of wood and strings, but it is a family member to me as well.














