Pauline O.

One dark and dreary day in February, 1994, the Creative Expressions classroom had fallen into a deep silence, a situation rare for this usually rambunctious group of youngsters. Generally there would be at least four or five students wide awake and kicking up a storm of intellectual controversy concerning some earth shaking new idea which had been presented to them by the Legendary Mr. Christopherson, whose ability to engage a class in one stimulating educational activity after another was, well, legendary.

This day, however, even the great teacher seemed out of tricks and, mimicking his students, had settled himself down to a long winter's nap, slumped across his comfortable desk.

Then it happened. One student who had not stood out as being anything more than your usual, run‑of‑the‑mill genius, falling into the highest 0.005% of the population, and so forth, suddenly jumped up, ran over to the $54,000 grand piano (purchased by the Legendary Mr. Christopherson on a whim one day with the thought of providing his students with something to plunk around on to kill time during class), and yelled, "Hey, let's put a little life into this party, shall we?"

With that, the young Pauline O. began to play the "Cow-Cow Boogie" with such vim and vigor that she soon had the entire class mooing along in appre­ciation, feet stamping in time on the floor to represent those syncopated hoof beats. The whole class became totally engrossed in the music to the extent that when finally the intricate melody, accompanied by that walking rhythm in the left hand, stopped, everyone found themselves looking stupidly at each other as though they had all just emerged from a country‑western film. So well had this talented girl represented the bovine frame of mind that three members of the class found that they had turned to their cud‑chewing neighbors and were futilely attempting to milk them. One fellow who had always hated milk, found he could hardly wait to get to lunch to buy a couple gallons of high‑premium, middle school pasteurized.

As the Legendary Mr. Christopherson was clearing the white and black cow spots from his own temporarily clouded mind, he began to realize what had just happened here. This young pianist had the power to express whole scenarios through her playing. Purely as a test of this ability, the great teacher asked young Pauline if she happened to know the rather obscure, science‑oriented piece, "Snake Crossing," to which she hissed, "Of course, I learned that one back when my piano teacher loaned me a collection called "Music of the Reptiles.” And with that she began to play the most slithering and twisting rendition of the work that the great teacher had ever heard (and that's really saying a lot since "Snake Crossing," by Slim Adder, had always been one of his favorite piano works, causing him to buy no less than three dozen different versions by various well‑known scaly pianists).

Actually, the piece turned out to be a rather poor choice since the entire class, soon mentally enveloped by the spell brought on by young Pauline's playing, proved to have serpensphobia, resulting in visions of snakes of all sizes and colors covering the floor, five deep. The class poured from the room screaming, "Snake, Snake," so convincingly that the Legendary Mr. Hergert, history teacher, who happened to be out in the hall at that moment grabbing a breath of fresh air, needing to escape from his own classroom where students had been sampling gas‑producing, Legendary Mrs. Martin’s ancient French cooking recipes, went running to arm himself with the teaching staff's forked‑stick, kept in the faculty room nearby in case of any snake‑like emergencies (it may be noted that the Legendary Mr. Christopherson was out the door first, a fact he later attributed to following his duty as dedi­cated teacher, clearing the way for the others, but certainly in no way because of any fear of snakes whatsoever).

At the advice of her great teacher, young Pauline now dedicated her life to the piano. Upon extensive investigation, it was determined that her ability was limited to creating mental images of animals only; that is, she was unable to convincingly portray how it feels to be a plant, or a rock, and so forth‑-only animals. She was totally unequaled when it came to bridging the mental frame of minds between human and animal. What's more, this spell binding ability was recordable. When the Legendary Mr. Christopherson realized this, he successfully urged young Pauline to begin a life‑long assemblage of musical pieces that would represent the whole of the animal kingdom. The great teacher's motive here was that of furthering under­standing between humans and animals, and Ms. Pauline bought into the scheme whole‑heartedly.

Attempting to put some kind of order into her work as she grew older, she began concentrating on higher ordered animals such as might be found in the typical barnyard around Parkland where she lived. She soon had people all over the world buying and listening to her records, resulting in a growing appreciation by humanity of farm animals. Her "Chicken Reel" had people clucking and pecking at each other; "Pig In A Pen," had listeners reveling and rolling in the mud; "Duck Dance," grew feathers on some and sent them swimming off across the nearest pond (indeed, some even headed south for the winter); fields were plowed and furrowed roundabout when "Horse Power" was played.

It was when she switched to her next group of animal subjects, "Sea‑Like," as she entitled the album, that a down side of her playing emerged, which eventually resulted in the album being banned, with all copies recalled and destroyed. This album of inventive music and magical piano artistry resulted in the deaths of many‑a‑listener. Numerous people drown while trying to recapture the ecstasy experienced while listening to "Fish‑Fins, An Under Water Fantasy;” while "Danger, Octopus" resulted in certain large‑lunged people going on a power trip and killing unsuspecting neighbors by suction; "Tingle" led certain unstable persons to plug themselves into their wall outlets in an attempt to charge up while emulating the life style of an electric eel; many listeners of "Shark Attack" sharpened their teeth and went around town chewing on people.

Fortunately for us all, and at the urging of the Legendary Mr. Christopherson, Ms. Pauline is now concentrating all her musical effort on what might be called the "cute and fuzzy" members of the animal kingdom, with the hope that when her latest record releases have spread around the world, we may all look forward to an era of peace and happiness.