Klarinet Archive - Posting 000144.txt from 2000/03

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] A modest proposal about student mouthpieces (was [kl] Falling in
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 20:27:43 -0500

Nancy Buckman wrote,
>Personally, I'm waiting for her description of that reed that hasn't been
removed from the mouthpiece since it was put there by the ten-year-old who
owns it and can't get it off the mouthpiece because it's stuck!>

Naturally, my first thought was the automatic shudder of anyone who has pried
off a scum-stuck reed and, with wrinkled nose and gritted teeth, cleaned out
the verminous, greeny-brown sludge in the mouthpiece. Surely any adult would
wish to send the grubby no-neck monsters to the sink after every practice,
with stern instructions about hygiene.

But then, on the <[kl] show of hands> thread, apropos of a different problem,
Tony Pay wrote,
>The difficulty comes when someone wants to make a pronouncement about what
*someone elses should do*. Then we have to do our best to make sure that we
speak in objective terms about what is objective, whilst encouraging the
other person to engage in themselves what only they can contribute. Mixing
the two things only results in confusion.>

>And the method of probing the objective world (science) can often be very
useful, because humans do fool themselves very easily about their intuitions
-- wanting to be *right*, of course!>

>Hence the paradox that although you 'know' a lot more about your body than a
doctor does in one sense, he 'knows' (another sense) a lot more about your
body than you do.>

>It's better to understand how this can be so than to come down on one side
or the other. >

Hmm. Tony's onto something here. Maybe we've been taking a wrong-headed
approach to the filthiness of student mouthpieces. Perhaps we should ask:
Why have so many kids independently (and in brave defiance of adult advice to
the contrary) allowed their clarinet mouthpieces to become breeding grounds
for all manner of oozing putrescence? Can this be a coincidence? Maybe the
kids aren't so dumb after all! Maybe they know their own bodies so well that
they instinctively use their clarinet mouthpieces as primitive -- no, not
necessarily primitive, but perhaps highly sophisticated -- inoculation
devices!

Precedents abound. How does one protect oneself from arsenic poisoning? By
repeatedly ingesting small doses of arsenic, then gradually building up to
larger and larger doses, until one can safely consume a quantity of arsenic
that would kill anyone who hadn't built up a tolerance. How do allergy shots
work? By exposing the allergy sufferer to tiny, then increasing doses of the
allergen until the patient becomes desensitized. Similarly, inoculating
someone with dead bacteria can stimulate the immune system to develop
antibodies against the live bacteria; while infecting a person with one
relatively benign pathogen can teach the body to ward off a similar but more
dangerous one, as infection with cowpox immunizes against smallpox.

The student begins with a clean, sanitary mouthpiece, safe for the most
delicate and vulnerable little innocent. But, from day one, the student's
spit soaks into the reed, infusing it with whatever bacteria, mold and so
forth the student has encountered that day. Some of these life forms are
harmless; some are pathogens. They meet and greet in the welcoming, wet,
warm environment. They boogie til they puke. They mingle bodily fluids in
orgies of spore and seed. They and their millions of offspring build up into
a rich community of complex slime that thickens day by day and hardens into a
pungent crust teeming and reeking with life. This crust, which sticks like
glue to mouthpiece and reed, guarantees a constant and ever-increasing
exposure, every time the student wraps lips and tongue around the mouthpiece
and reed.

As the student licks the reed, the tender mucus membranes of the mouth and
throat readily absorb the living cultures. Sucking heavily impregnated
fluids from the mouthpiece when it gurgles plaintively for such attention,
the student swallows small quantities of this serum (yes, we might as well
call it that!) every day, in increasing saturation as the culture ripens. The
child's immune system reacts and feeds back antibodies into the culture. In
this ongoing give-and-take process, the serum constantly adapts and adjusts
to the student's environment, thus allowing the child's immune system to
build up defenses against whatever pathogens his or her filthy little
nose-picking peers introduce to the blend.

As the sludge builds up in the mouthpiece and on the reed, the child adapts
to levels of pathogens that ought to prove lethal, yet the child thrives! It
seems clear that, instead of doing harm, the complex ecosystem that develops
in a well-infested mouthpiece protects our youngsters. Why, after leaving
the same reed stuck to the mouthpiece for, say, six or eight months, that kid
could probably snort lines of ground-up plague fleas with no ill effects.

If this hypothesis proves correct, then, contrary to our previous notions, we
should *forbid* the kids to remove their reeds after practicing and *forbid*
the washing of mouthpieces and reeds! Would anyone care to volunteer a child
for this experiment?

>;-)
Lelia

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