The VibraKids Chapter 3 – Tommy the Trumpet

Tommy the Trumpet woke up with a start. He didn’t know where he was. He looked around at the room he was in and then ran to the window and looked out.

“I MUST BE IN A DIFFERENT CITY,” he thought. “NOTHING IS FAMILIAR.” He was really scared now. He was no longer in the Junction Musical Instrument Factory where he had decided to explore and had entered the body of the trumpet.

“OH, NOW I REMEMBER,” he thought to himself. The sound of his tones was so pretty that those in charge at the musical instrument factory had decided to send him to a customer in a big city clear across the country. This man was famous for his trumpet playing and was the leader of a band that appeared weekly on a famous TV show.

The room Tommy was in now was part of the man’s house and seemed to be a music room. There were a few other instruments in the room along with a large piano and several music stands. There was a microphone setup and a wall lined with mirrors. On the opposite wall there were book shelves filled with books and magazines and sheet music of all kinds.

Tommy looked around his new home. He thought to himself, “I WAS USED TO BEING ABLE TO ROAM WHEREVER I WANTED BEFORE I GOT CAUGHT IN THIS TRUMPET.” Now that he couldn’t do whatever he wanted he didn’t know what to do with himself. He decided to explore the book shelves and found many books about trumpets, the people who played them and the uses they were put to.

“WOW,” he thought, “LOOK AT THIS BOOK. IT TELLS ALL ABOUT THE TRUMPET AND HAS PICTURES OF EARLY TRUMPETS.” He was curious to know how the body of the trumpet had come about, what it looked like in the beginning and what it had been used for in the past. He also wondered what it was mostly used for now and what would he could accomplish while he was inside the trumpet. He hoped he’d find some answers in the books on the shelves. Since he had nothing else to do, he settled down in a big easy chair in the corner and started to look through the book.

He was so excited he started talking to the piano in the room. “Miss Piano, did you know that in the beginning the trumpet started out as a piece of wood from an oak tree limb and was just a whistle that people would blow into? Then they carved holes in the long part of the whistle and placed their fingers over the holes to be able to get different sounds when they blew into it. Isn’t that exciting?” he asked Miss Piano. She had nothing to say. She yawned to show Tommy that she was bored by what he was saying.

“OH WELL,” he thought. “I’LL JUST KEEP READING AND LEARNING ABOUT IT BY MYSELF.”

The early trumpets didn’t have much use. Some farmers used them to call animals, but for the most part they were toys for children to play with. As the years passed, more people became interested in this toy and changed what it was made of. They started making it out of a bright shiny metal with a bell shape at one end. Then a flapper was made that would close over the sound holes so more tones could be made when someone blew into it. It grew to be an important instrument, especially for kings or queens when they wanted to talk to the people or use it to announce when they were arriving at a certain place. It was a very loud and brassy, bold and beautiful instrument. Eventually people discovered that it did have a softer sound that could be quite nice and they began to use it to play pretty pieces instead of always just having it bold, loud and showy.

All of this was fascinating to Tommy and he couldn’t wait to have the chance to try making the different sounds. No one had tried to get music out of him since he had left the factory. The man he had been sent to was away on a trip. Tommy couldn’t wait for him to get home. When the man did come home, he had company with him and didn’t pay much attention to Tommy until the company left. When he finally picked up his new trumpet and began playing it he was thrilled with the sounds he was able to get from it. Tommy was also happy about the sounds coming from him.

When the man played slow, sad songs, the trumpet had a beautiful, flowing, mellow sound. When the man wanted to be sassy and bold and naughty in his playing, the trumpet responded right away. The trumpet was very responsive to every thought, wish and desire of the man who was playing it. He had never before owned such a beautiful instrument. He couldn’t get over it and put it down to go call his friends and tell them about his new trumpet.

“Sam, you just won’t believe the beautiful sound I get from my new trumpet,” Don said. “I picked up my old trumpet and started playing it. It sounded dead. It didn’t have any life in the tones that came out of it. There was no heart and soul in that old horn so I put it back in its case and just sat there looking in amazement at my new instrument.”

“It sounds almost like magic,” Sam replied, “like the trumpet is alive. It’s hard to believe. I’ve heard of the Magic Flute that Mozart wrote about, but never a Magic Trumpet.”

“There’s probably no way I can make you believe that it’s not magic. It’s an ordinary trumpet. Why don’t you and Wayne and Alan come over tomorrow to hear for yourselves?” Don asked. Then he put the phone down and went back to the music room to play his beautiful, new trumpet some more.

Meanwhile, the man’s daughter Amy had come from school and had come into the music room to practice her piano lesson.

“THIS IS NOT A PRETTY SOUNDING PIANO,” thought Tommy. “IT CERTAINLY NEEDS SOME HELP.”

“Why do you sound so bad?” he asked Miss Piano when Amy had left the room. Miss Piano just looked at him with anger flashing out of her eyes, but had nothing to say.

Tommy wondered if he could get one of the VibraKids to enter this piano. He knew that if it were played at the same time he was playing it would make him sound bad. He wanted the other instruments he played with to make music that was just as pretty as his was.

The man’s friends came over the next day and Alan sat down at the piano to play along with the trumpet. Because of the bad shape the piano was in, Tommy got stubborn and decided not to help make the sounds anything special. It sounded just like any other trumpet.

Don couldn’t understand it. Sam, Wayne and Alan left after teasing him about being a little bit weird the night before when he had raved about the trumpet. Don decided to play the new trumpet some more. The house was all quiet now and there was no one there to play the piano so Tommy gave it his all and the beautiful music began coming out of the trumpet again. Don just didn’t understand it. He even began to be a little afraid because he couldn’t figure out what was going on. He wondered if it really was magic. Then he thought that maybe it was something inside him that made the difference in the sound. Puzzled, he finally packed Tommy away in his case for the night and went upstairs to bed himself.

“Miss Piano, you’ve got an attitude problem,” Tommy said to her the next morning. “True, you’re an older instrument and perhaps didn’t have good care in the past, but I still can’t understand why you can’t make pretty sounds. Is it just because you don’t care, or are you really unable to sound pretty? I’m going to have a big problem living in this house with you unless I can do something about the horrible sounds you make.”

Miss Piano was jealous of Tommy. “I really don’t like you,” she said. “I know that you don’t think that I’m very pretty. I know that you’re really a much better instrument than me, but why do you have to be so mean about it?” she said to Tommy.

She didn’t understand why he was a much better instrument and was really envious of him. “IT TICKLES ME THAT I HAVE A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF CONTROL OVER TOMMY,” she thought gleefully to herself. “HE WOULDN’T RESPOND TO THE MAN’S THOUGHTS WHEN ALAN WAS PLAYING ME ALONG WITH TOMMY.” This gave her a feeling of power, to know that as long as she made ugly sounds that Tommy would too.

But deep down inside, somehow this way of thinking didn’t seem right to her anymore. She really wanted to become like Tommy, not have him act like her and be mean, but she didn’t want to let him know it.

The next day when Tommy woke up, Miss Piano asked him, “How come you can make such beautiful sounds? Are you made out of different stuff than I am?”

Tommy replied, “Yes, because I’m younger, the material I’m made out of is a better quality metal than what your sounding board is made of. Mine has a higher vibration due to a new way of making the metal. But the biggest difference is because of ALL,” Tommy told her.

“What do you mean?” she asked immediately.

Tommy than began to tell her the story of ALL the Almighty Organ and the VibraKids.

“Oh,” she cried, “I want to have one of the VibraKids take up residence in me. I’d like to be able to make beautiful sounds like you do. I also want us to be able to make great music together. I don’t want you to stop playing beautiful sounds just because I’m an ugly duckling. How can I get one of the VibraKids to come live in me?” she asked.

Tommy thought about it for quite awhile. Finally, he told her, “You’ll have to work very hard on yourself. You’ll have to change a lot of your ways of thinking, especially your ‘I don’t care’ attitude as far as trying to make better sounds. You can help raise your own vibration you know, and this is what you will have to do before a VibraKid can live in you. The ones who live in pianos are those whose vibrations are higher than the others because they are a mixture. They’re the ones who stay up high because the bright lights and harsh sounds of the city bother them. You’ll really have to work hard to attract one of them to you.”

Miss Piano was quiet for a long time thinking about what Tommy had said. “How do you know that ALL knew everything there was to know about pianos?” she asked.

Tommy replied, “Because everything that makes up a piano was part of what made up ALL. He had the possibility of being any instrument he wanted because he was made up of all of them. There is no instrument that he couldn’t have become and still can become if a suitable body is found for the fragment of his mind that was the thought for that instrument.”

“You’ll just have to believe me because of my beautiful sound,” Tommy continued. “There is no other proof that I can give you because ALL is no longer in one piece. Besides, you can’t know what he’s like until you change your bad attitudes and start to raise your vibrations. Then you can attract a VibraKid to come live with you – one who will have past knowledge of your kinfolk. When this happens, you’ll know that you will forever after be one with the great organ called ALL”

Beginning at that time Miss Piano started working on herself. Soon Tommy could actually stand to stay in the room when Amy practiced each day. Previously he had tried to hide and cover up his ears. Now he was beginning to hear a prettier sound coming out of the piano.

“Dad, do you realize that this piano is starting to sound better.” Don’s daughter Amy said. “Did you have it tuned,” she asked?”

“No,” answered Don, “but that would be a good idea.” They had the piano tuner come in and give Miss Piano a check up. The tuner stretched the strings into the best tune he could. He fixed a few other problems such as certain keys that didn’t work.

Miss Piano listened real hard every time Don played his new trumpet and noticed how the different songs all came out sounding just like they should. The response of the trumpet was perfect for each different feeling that Don wanted to express.

Miss Piano kept hoping that Don’s friends would come back over so she could see if Tommy thought she had improved enough to play with. Before this could take place, Miss Piano had something strange happen to her one night. The next morning, full of excitement, she said to Tommy, “I felt a tingling and a feeling of really being alive enter my case and move along my strings and perk up my sound board. I know that something very important took place last night.”

Tommy cried, “Peggy? Is that you Peggy? Did you decide to come live with Miss Piano?”

“I most certainly did,” Peggy said. “It’s great to see you again Tommy. Now I don’t feel so lonely.”

“Same here,” responded Tommy. They began to talk a mile a minute about old times and what had happened to others that they both knew.

Later that day Don’s friends did come over again and when Alan sat down at the piano and started playing it sounded so beautiful that Tommy responded with his absolutely finest tones.

Don’s friends were amazed. “You were right all along,” said Wayne. “We just couldn’t hear the difference before but we sure can now.”

Sam asked, “Are you sure it’s not a Magic Trumpet? Where did you buy it and by the way, who fixed your piano?”

Don’s friends were inspired to go home and take out their own instruments and look inside them and see what they could do to improve the sounds they were getting out of them. What they realized now was that one instrument making beautiful sounds will make all the other instruments it comes in touch with want to do the same.