So . . . I got the bass drum.

(For those of you reading this blog for the first time, please see the item below this one, if you want to know what I’m talking about).

About seven other guys, I think, were going for the two bass drums, but desperation honed my senses, and gave me the edge I needed to beat them.

When the conductor said the word and we were free to go get our instruments, most of the people waded directly into the sea of chairs, brass, and strings. It was a human traffic jam.

Not me. I looped around, went the long way, got to the back row of the orchestra, and had a clear aisle all the way to the bass drums. I was already there, smiling, while the other would-be drummers tried to get clear of the crowds.

Step One: Get the bass drum. Mission Accomplished.

Step Two: Learn how to either a) play it; or b) fake playing it, so as to not call attention to myself.

After a brief pep talk by the conductor, the different groups were split up into our breakout sessions, so we could get small-group tutoring and learn to play our sections of the piece. Then, we’d all gather back together to play as a group.

So, I had to lug my new bass drum off the stage, down a hallway, and into a room with the other percussionists. Within three minutes of our lesson, I was lost.

There was music to read, but I couldn’t read it.

There was a fairly simple beat to follow, but I couldn’t follow it. I was back in the fifth grade again, about to be humiliated once more.

I had just made up my mind to fake the whole thing and never actually hit the drum during the performance, when an angel found me.

I have already forgotten his name, but he was the other bass drummer. He was English, and very nice. And handsome. He looked over, saw that I was struggling, and saved my life.

He obviously had some kind of music background, because he really knew what he was doing. And he became my private tutor. He showed me when, where, and how to hit the drum. He showed me how to lean against it with my leg, to stop it suddenly.

“This is what teamwork is all about,” I remember thinking. “Maybe there is something to this corporate teambuilding stuff. I really like this guy. Maybe we can have a pint afterwards, what?”

And then it was show time. We carried our drums back up, and set up for the show. Because of my new buddy and teammate, I was confident.

“I’ll keep on eye on you, mate,” he said to me. I almost hugged him. In fact, I think I did hug him.

We had to do two full rehearsals before our official “symphony.” The first one was sloppy, but better than I thought it would be.

The second rehearsal was when disaster struck, and I found out something about myself that I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life.

First, you need to know how the symphony we were performing ends. It ends with the entire percussion section doing a dramatic drum roll, with the two bass drummers leaning over and banging away furiously on the right side of their drums.

Then, on a signal from the conductor, we stop. And we do a hard stop, by lifting our right legs up and leaning them into the drums, so that the sound stops immediately, without any echo.

I was ready. I was coached. I was only slightly tipsy. This was my time. I was going to make up for all those horrible trumpet lessons and other painful memories of my childhood.

The piece started. I was flawless . . . but only because of my bass drum buddy. He coached me the entire time. “Now!” he would say, when we were supposed to come in. “Two hits break, two hits break,” he would say, during the “two hits, break” section.

He basically walked me all the way through the piece, until the end. Now, it was time for the drum roll. My wing man looked at me. “Ready?” he said. I nodded. God damn right I was ready. I was Maverick, and he was Goose. Let's do this thing, I remember thinking.

“Now!” he shouted, and in perfect synch we started hitting those glorious drums. We were driving the symphony. I wasn’t on a stage with 150 other fakers and tin ears. I was driving the London Philharmonic.

I was so wrapped up in my own excellence, in fact, that I forgot to stop my drum roll. As I said earlier, it was supposed to be a hard stop, which you achieve by lifting your right leg up and pressing it to the drum.

I didn’t do that. And so, three seconds after everybody else had stopped playing, you could still hear my drum. It was as if a hush had fallen over the crowd, and some big fat slob had farted.

At that point, even though it was too late, I tried to stop the reverberation. I hoisted my leg up to the drum, and tried to press it against it. I couldn’t even do that right. My leg kept slipping off.

And then I looked up. Everyone in the symphony had turned around, and was looking at me as I tried to hump my drum.

Well . . . they weren’t looking at me. They were looking at us. At my new partner and me, together. They didn’t know who had screwed up . . . just that it was one of us.

And that’s when it happened.

“It was him!” I shouted, pointing my drumstick at my new buddy.

That’s right, under intense pressure, I folded. This was supposed to be an exercise in teamwork, and the first chance I got, I threw my new Brit buddy under the bus.

This was a man who had helped me. He was the perfect teammate. He represented everything that a teammate should be. He completed me.

And I screwed him.

And you know what? He still helped me. For the final round, the actual performance, he still gave me my cues. What a man. What a wing man. And what a scuzbag I am.

And of course you know what I did for the actual performance. During the final section, the drum roll, the best part of the piece, I barely hit my drum, and I made damn sure I did a hard stop about six seconds before I was supposed to, so that I wouldn’t screw it up.

And my new buddy? He left without saying goodbye.

Now I know why I work for myself. I’m simply not fit to work with other people.

You can actually see a video of part of the performance here. I'm the constipated-looking guy in the back.