Lol! About the same story here with the flutophone! I either just did a do-ra-me... Or something repetitive to squeak through. I remember the stress and frustration that I wasn't good at it, didn't like it, embarrassed at my performance. Never used it again after that grade.

The same thing happened to me in 3rd or 4th grade. One day the teacher said something to me like: "So for the Christmas concert, do you want to hold the recorder and pretend to play, actually play, or hold nothing?" The other kids looked at me awkwardly and with pity. That's when I realized that I had made no progress. I decided to hold nothing and just stand there while everyone else played.

We had to buy ours. They were like $1.50 when I got mine. The next year, my younger brother needed one too as he was now old enough to be in whatever grade that was when they made you play it. The price went to $2.00 and my mom bitched at what a fucking ripoff that was. $2.00 was about the minimum hourly wage back then and my dad was probably making more than $100k per year at that point. I knew we weren't poor so was trying to calm my mom down over fifty fucking cents and offered to pay her for it. She came from a time when money was tight and everyone had to fight for every penny. She is still the same way today.