The Definition of Cool

In college i sang in our concert choir and the music director was cool. He made all of the Victorian costumes for our annual madrigal dinner. He was a great teacher and director. He had control over rehearsals : imagine a room full of tired, cranky college students late in the afternoon four days a week chatting and being, well, cranky, loud college students; Marion hit one chord on the piano and the entire room stood up in silence. To this day when i hear certain chords i feel compelled to stand up straight and breathe from my diaphragm. Anyhoo, at my upcoming college reunion i am singing in the reunion choir. We are doing Mozart's Requiem, which is not an easy little piece to say the least. I sang it my senior year - 16 years ago- and figured i could relearn it, especially since the director offered to send out-of-towners a CD and/or a score to practice. I opened my package last night: As i flipped through the score my eyes caught this note: Wow, i thought, Marion wrote me a note; he's so cool. Then i noticed that there were more notations in the score marking phrasing, breathing and the like. Wait a second... that looks like my handwriting. Come to think of it, the "Hi Niki" looks a lot like my college roommate's handwriting. Oh My Goodness : he sent me MY score from my senior year!!! I am amazed. It should be pretty easy to relearn now since i have my own notes on which phrases and words gave me trouble before. It is crazy. How can he still have these? How can he still have sign-out sheets from 1992 to know that score #24 was mine? How can even still remember me since he's had thousands of students? And why would anyone go to all of the trouble of sending me my old score? Because Marion is just that cool.