I have done the most terrible thing. Today, while getting ready to practice my Selmer Paris Superaction Seris II saxophone, my horn slipped off the neck strap... (Saxophone players will know exactly what I mean when I say that stupid little clip that holds the horn to the strap turned itself inside out, which so often happens) and because I was putting on the reed, and had both hands on the ligature, the saxophone went crashing to the ground. I am upset. The bell is no longer in the shape of a circle, but oblong, because it took the force of the blow. When that happened the keys in the lower stack shifted, which makes it impossible to play the low register notes. It fell on the carpet, which is better than it falling on the hard floor, or say, down the stairs... but it doesn't matter. A broken horn is a broken horn.

So now, on Monday, I get to box up my most prized possession, take it down to the UPS office, and ship it to Illinois. There's a store there called The Sax Shop, (which is where I bought the horn) and they are well-known for their miraculous repairs of even the most ruined instruments. (In college a friend had his sax knocked off the top of a piano onto the floor, and when it came back, he said it played better than it did when he first bought it; they even say that the guys at the shop repaired a sax that had been run over by a car. Wow.)

I know that having it fall off the neck strap isn't my fault, it's not like I was just letting it hang there without holding it all. But I'll be damned if I'll ever put a reed on standing up again. When I get it back it will probably be as good as new, but man, I feel wretched. My clean record of saxophone care for 12 years is tarnished forever.