My father, Warren, lived at the music school from about 1970 to 1974, when I was three to seven years old. While he taught, I spent my free time climbing up and down the pipes in the foyer. One was scalding hot and the other freezing cold, and both covered with chipping paint, but I found them to be a source of endless fun. I would climb to the top, alongside the stairs, and somehow dangle there upside down. I would entertain the students while they waited on a battered church pew. One lady called me a "little monkey" and I took this to be quite a compliment.

Other times I ate tomato soup in the Formica kitchen, learned to play Mary Had a Little Lamb on an old grand piano. At least once I spent approximately one million hours in tense confrontation with a pile of clothes on a chair. In the dark, it seemed quite clear to me that it wasn't a pile of clothes at all, but a very still, patient witch, who only waited for me to doze off to make her move.

But my most memorable experience at WBSM took place on a carefree summer's day. I pranced around on the front porch aimlessly while my father worked in the office. I don't recall what I was wearing-- a little dress or a pair of shorts perhaps. But whatever it was I can guarantee you that my knees were exposed, because I noticed a remarkable coincidence: my knees were exactly the same width as the space between the square vertical supports of the porch railing. I even tried it out. Yes, my knee was not one millimeter too wide or too narrow. It fit perfectly. I enjoyed this amazing piece of luck for a few moments, and then got bored with it and attempted to resume my prancing. But somehow, although my knee could move freely up and down, it could not come out.

I don't know whether I let out a distress call, or whether my father noticed I had been extremely close to the railing for longer than made sense, but shortly he was kneeling beside me, trying to free my knee. Soon a scraggly band of musicians and students gathered round and began to offer suggestions. I didn't like how this was going at all. My thoughts wandered to a peculiar store, the Artificial Limb and Brace, that I had passed on several occasions. Questioning an adult about its purpose, I had learned a great deal more about amputees and prosthetics than was probably called for. It occurred to me that soon I could be practicing shoe-tying with my own foot on the table facing me. This worry blossomed into terror when someone produced a saw.

Up until that point I doubt that I had conducted myself with anything like stoicism, but here I think I lost my composure entirely. Hippie vivisectionists! (So those hair-raising sounds from upstairs weren't beginning violin!) I redoubled my efforts to free myself and flee this band of fiends. My father talked to me soothingly, while holding me with increasing firmness. He reminded me to sit still as the saw made its slow progress through the wood. I did sit still. Outwardly, I may have even appeared to be precociously calm and courageous. But the reality was that my father had me totally immobilized. Finally the saw broke through, the slat wobbled a quarter inch, and I was liberated.

That was probably 28 years ago. Every now and then, when I'm in the neighborhood, I step onto the WBSM porch to see if the cut slat is still there. Last time I checked, it was.