When You’re in the Mood for a Story

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High-Falutin’ Music

A great-uncle once described her as being an ‘odd duck’. She was not a duck—although her eyes could be described as having the same coloring as a mallard’s feathers. Even so, she was just a human girl; but she was, in fact, odd. And so the nickname stuck. Dorthea Dobberstien—or “Duckie” to all who knew her—seemed to live and breathe the definition of “eccentric”.

When she was a little girl, much too little to care about such things, she insisted on learning the proper way to waltz and cha-cha. Instead of asking for a banana for a snack, she would ask for “a wee bit of sardines and toast, if you please”. She seemed to almost like hand-writing thank you notes, and she snubbed her nose at video games. Her grandfather delighted in her “old soul”, but at her tender age, oddness came with its consequences.

Kids tended to avoid her, not because she was unkind or they were demanding, more so because young grade schoolers don’t always know how to allow for differences. When teachers took surveys in class as to what people liked, many of the kids in her class would first look around the room to see what other classmates were choosing so they could vote likewise. Duckie, however, wouldn’t survey or debate—she would simply vote for what she wanted, even if hers was the only hand raised. While this would have made Ben or Charlotte shrink in their chairs and blush, Duckie would just shrug and move along.

So, at recess, she seemed to be alone a lot. She also didn’t seem to mind. Kids would catch her smiling at nothing in particular, and they would whisper to each other that Duckie was swaying as if to her own soundtrack. Little did they know, they were right.

Duckie did have her own soundtrack playing. Often, in her mind, violin strings were bowing or trumpets were brassing staccato. Her great-uncle, the same one who coined her nickname, never could understand Duckie’s fascination with “high-falutin music”.

***

One day, during recess, Duckie was, as per usual, sitting near the monkey bars. Today was a glorious, quiet kind of May morning—the kind where the birds were chirping as they busied around making nests, and the bunnies came out of hiding to nibble the young new grass just beyond the playground’s fence. It put into Duckie’s mind “Spring” from The Four Seasons by Vivaldi. She was humming it quietly to herself when she was interrupted by heavy footsteps approaching.

Another kid from her class, Reggie, was thundering up to the structure at full speed—his face enflamed with either rage or exertion. He slammed his hands onto the first rung and swung himself forward until he quickly jumped to the platform on the other side. Back and forth he swung himself—ten times until he landed, panting, on the side nearest where Duckie sat.

“You look like you want to kick something,” Duckie observed.

“What?!” the boy said, turning and noticing Duckie for the first time. “Yeah, well, maybe I do,” he said hotly, picking up a handful of woodchips and hurling them to the ground.

Duckie waited.

Reggie continued, “Tommy said I could be Captain this time, but then when I went to pick teams, he totally took over and said I didn’t do it right. But I’ve been playing soccer just as long as he has, and I was totally doing it right. And so, yeah, I’m mad.”

“You need some Shostakovich,” Duckie said quietly.

“I need what now?” Reggie said, his cheeks still flaming.

“I said you need some Shostakovich. Or maybe Dvořák.”

“What are you talking about?!”

“They’re composers. They write music,” Duckie explained.

“I know what a composer is,” Reggie sulked, shoving his hand through his sweaty red hair, making it stand up in fiery spikes. “But what’s music got to do with getting kicked out of a soccer game?”

“Well, whenever I feel super mad, listening to those composers makes me feel better.” Duckie looked at Reggie’s red cheeks and wild hair. “Better go with Dvořák —specifically, the last movement of his ‘Symphony Number Nine’.”

The bell rang, and Duckie got up to go back to class. Reggie just stared after her for a moment, bewildered at what had just transpired. This was the first time they had ever talked and now he knew the rumors to be true—Duckie Dobberstien was super weird.