Once, only once, did Sam have a mandatory music class. It was in fourth grade... Sam was ten. He was handed a saxophone.
Dean and Cas have been my writer's playthings for too long, and it's Sam's turn to have a story all to himself.
A child who wants to go to college needs to:
Pay attention in class
Test well
Throw in a little extracurricular
Finance.
A hunter's kid who wants to go to college needs to:
Pay attention in class
Read textbooks on the missed information in his spare time
Test well
Do his best to convince his father to stay enough days in the same school to get through every standardized test
Throw in a little extracurricular
(And no, not the monster-hunting kind)
Finance
And by finance, of course, we mean somehow get a full ride.
Sam Winchester was very good at this. He had to be. Dean encouraged him, and Dean's encouragement meant the world to Sam. It was for this reason that Sam did his best to participate in science classes he started halfway through a lab, write essays on a book he read half of, and work on plays he never saw to completion. He competed in sports once or twice, and he joined clubs for two meetings before vanishing into the wind for another case.
Sam was good at everything because he had to be good at everything. If a school had a lacrosse team, Sam was a lacrosse player. If a school had a wrestling team, Sam was a wrestler. If a school had a chess club, Sam played chess. If a school offered biology, Sam loved biology, and if a school offered physics, Sam loved physics.
Once, only once, did Sam have a mandatory music class. It was in fourth grade... Sam was ten. The students at this school, a Performing Arts school, had been playing since their chubby child's fingers were large enough to wrap around a violin or trumpet.
(If Dean had this class, Sam knew, Dean would skip this class. But Dean wanted to be a hunter. Sam wanted to go to college.)
The teacher, smiling brightly at her new student, handed him a baffling, shiny, curved metal... thing.
"I don't know how to play," Sam said, more bluntly than he would usually.
"It's okay," the teacher said. Mrs. Hampton. "Here's how you hold a saxophone."
Sam's hands were guided around the keys of the saxophone. It was too large and uncomfortable, but if the school had a music program, then Sam must be a musician. Sam pressed his lips to the mouthpiece, imitating a child in the next row.
Mrs. Hampton smiled her honey smile. "Don't purse your lips like that, darling. Here. Watch Robby."
Robby, a fifth grader, showed Sam the proper way to play the instrument.
Sam smiled a shy thanks. He knew how to read music, sort of, because one time Dean had found an old guitar and some sheet music and taught Sam late one night when Dad was away. In the future, Sam would look back at that moment and remember the wistfulness on Dean's face that his younger self could not see: once upon a time, like all other little boys, Dean had wanted to play guitar. Hunting does not allow for rock guitarists.
That aside... Sam knew how to read music.
Mrs. Hampton gave him a little refresher, and Sam committed it to memory. She showed him which keys to press to create which notes. Sam committed that to memory as well, although it took a few tries.
"All right, try it!" Mrs. Hampton said.
Tentatively, Sam blew.
Soundlessly, Sam's breath escaped him.
"You gotta blow harder," said Robby. "Like you're actually trying."
So Sam blew harder. The instrument squeaked ferociously, causing no shortage of wincing about the room.
Mrs. Hampton began to direct him, channeling the flow of air and the shape of his lips. She talked him through pushing a small amount of air out of his gut, not his lungs. (At this point, Sam thought back to biology class and wondered what he was actually pushing air out of, if not his lungs. He didn't know what a dyafram was, but Mrs. Hampton kept using that word.)
But try as he might, Sam's saxophone stayed squeaky and toneless.
Mrs. Hampton showed Sam a practice room and gave him instructions to continue working, which he did, at least for a while. Halfway though class, when his gleaming hunk of brass had refused to produce anything better than the first sound he had created, he settled against the wall dejectedly and listened to the band play without him.
The school had a music program, so Sam had to be a musician, but... he wasn't. He wasn't a musician.
The upset ten-year-old, despite his upbringing and his father's attitude, could not stop the tears burning the corners of his eyes when he was rescued some quarter hour later from the room.
"I can't play saxophone!" he declared, only handing the offending piece of metal back to the teacher instead of throwing it because it was expensive.
"Darling..."
"I don't wanna go to this school," Sam confided. "I don't wanna learn music. I don't know how to play music."
"You'll get better with time," Mrs. Hampton informed Sam.
"I don't have time!"
"You have two years!" exclaimed Mrs. Hampton, who did not think past her own music teaching.
"I have two weeks!" Sam told her. "My dad's gonna be done with his job in two weeks."
Mrs. Hampton frowned sadly. "Do you want to try a different instrument?" she asked.
"No."
The teacher handed Sam a pair of mallets anyway, and put him in front of two drums. He was given music, and instructed to hit the left drum on the top x, and the right drum on the bottom x.
Sam tapped the drums.
They made a sound! They made a sound like they were supposed to! Sam smiled a watery smile, and allowed himself to be shepherded out the door, to where he knew Dean would be waiting to take him to the motel.
.....
Two weeks later, Sam was getting pretty good at following along with the band. He looked forward to music class. Music class made him smile.
"We leave tomorrow," Dean said, stopping the car at the front of the school so Sam could get out.
"I know," said Sam.
At the end of the day, he walked in the door for music class. His last music class.
Why not go out with a bang?
Sam had been instructed to use two small drums, but there were a lot of drums here. Some of them weren't drums; some were cymbals or xylophones or other things Sam didn't have names for. The band had been playing the same song for two weeks, and Sam knew how it went.
He crashed the cymbals when the band got loud. He poked the chimes when it seemed appropriate. He followed along with the trumpets on the xylophone. He wasn't very good at that, but he did it anyway. Sometimes, he would hit the big, big drum repeatedly in time with the music. The band never stopped. They were used to the kid in the back playing at odd times, and although he was making more noise than usual, they could ignore him.
Mrs. Hampton gave Sam a questioning look as he packed up to leave.
"I leave tomorrow," he said.
I have two weeks. So... This was actually it. This mini performance was a last hurrah for Sam Winchester. Mrs. Hampton received a small dose of reality.
"I'll miss you, Sam."
"Bye, Mrs. Hampton. Sorry about screwing up the band."
"It's okay. Music is for joy, and you looked like you were having fun. Bye, Sam."
Sam smiled, and Sam left.
It's called a diaphragm, Sam. It's the muscle that moves your lungs.
I am in the middle of reading the book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. It is an incredible book. You should not read this book on a bus, because when the bus inevitably stops, you will not want to stop reading.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius taught me that it is not necessary to tell your readers everything they need to know in order to have a good story. It also taught me that I don't give my readers enough credit for what information they can glean from context. This has been your Advice segment of my author notes, not from me, but from author Dave Eggers.