Teacher Secrets: Mr. Larson

By Sairah Gold

Who says band geeks aren't cool? Mr. Michael Larson proves that they can turn out to be pretty awesome. If you've ever had him in a class, you'd know that Mr. Larson is extremely comical and has a fantastic teaching style. Who would've thought that for the better part of his life, he was a band geek? Here's how it happened.

"I was registering for junior high, deciding what classes to take, and I just randomly decided to take band. Which was weird because none of my family had ever been in band. So I go into the band class and on the first day the teacher was asking kids what instrument they wanted to play and checking to make sure that they would be fit to play that instrument. So he got to me and asked me what instrument I wanted to play, and I really had no idea. But when I was a kid, there was this show on called "Silver Spoons", and the only things I remember from it is that the dad was really, really rich, he was a "cool dad", and he played the trombone. So that's the first thing I thought of, and so I decided to play trombone. I thought if I played it, I could be cool like the dad."

When asked if he turned out to be cool, he replied, "No. Unfortunately trombone wasn't actually a cool instrument. But I got really involved with it, and I was a total band geek. My friends were all in band, and I was actually in the band presidency. I was the secretary, because it was a traditional thing for the trombones to be the secretary of the band. We actually had it going for five years that a trombone player was the secretary. One of my really good friends, who was also a trombone player, ran against me and I was like, 'Why are you running against me?' and he said 'We gotta have a trombone player as the secretary." I told him, "Yeah, but if you don't run, I automatically get it.' But I won anyway."

Mr. Larson doesn't even play anymore. According to him it's been years since he's played, but he said he would do it if someone paid him to be in a talent show or something. He played right after high school in the pit orchestra for one of the SCERA summer shows, but after that, not really a lot. Even so, it just goes to show that even band geeks can be cool.