Bruce's (Employee at Western Farms) Last day on the job...

I have had the privilege of playing in the BYU Wind Symphony this last semester. I played Saxophone in the Wind Symphony for one semester back in 2007, and have been playing Clarinet in the Symphonic band ever since. This has been a great experience, getting to play with this group. It is really a terrific band, and we have a director who is awesome-Dr. Don Peterson. We were invited to be featured at the "CBDNA" (Why? Because we are Mormon and we love acronyms). The CBDNA stands for the "College band Deoxyribonucleic acid" [joke]. Ha ha ha, I just laughed at my own joke (which I need, apparently, as you [all] know, there will likely be a very very small sampling of people who will actually take the time to read this).

In all seriousness, "CBDNA" stands for the "College band director National association". Its one of those groups that with each name that you add to the title of the conference, you get more and more esoteric, until eventually nobody can be in it: "College...(OK, already cutting out a significant portion of the American Population)...band...(Now we are immediately narrowing this down. We take a group [college students] who are already more-or-less nerds in their own right, and select from amongthem the nerdiest nerds of them all [of which I am admittedly and happily one], the band kids)...directors...(need I say more? I really really want to, but I must hold back...basically you take these band kids [pardon the stigma]...and this is the guy [or girl]who is...their leader)...national association (they had to make it a national association because unless this was a national level group, they wouldn't have enough members for a significant meeting). Anyway, we were invited to perform for these guys in Reno, Nevada. Yeah. You take a sampling of all the "College Band Directors", and have us play for them. That makes us...well, I won't finish that sentence!

*sidenote*

I served my mission for my church, (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints) in Tulsa, OK. For any of you that know me, I have many stories from my mission, many serious and sacred, and others of a lighter nature. I say this because I have seen, probably more than many, my share of weird, funny, random things.

Keep in mind that in addition to serving in rural Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Kansas, I am from a town in Wyoming that only has around 500 people (see: "Sidewalks and Streetlights" published on 24 November, 2009 in the highly popular and fadicious blog: "House of Blues" [5thand7th.blogspot.com] for more information) in it, and is often the subject of ridicule by those who are more learned or sophisticated than I.

With this in mind, we return to our Hero, who is at the time in question in the almost-backseat of the tour Bus.

So there we were, at a gas station in Reno, NV or thereabouts, and I am wandering around trying to find something to buy (not because I necessarily needed or wanted it, but because my friends had all gone inside, and they had given us each $60 to be spent at our own will). As it turns out, I was incredibly grateful for making that decision to "follow the crowd", for the following experience changed my life forever.

I found this:

Delighted, I obviously made my way straight to the front, and "demanded" to see the manager. The guy that I talked to looked at me and said dryly: "He is not here, besides that is something that you would have to take up with one of our distributors", to which I replied: "OK, is he here?"

He didn't find it quite as funny as I, but who ever does?