True Story

Casey moved from trumpet to French Horn on a whim. She was a high performing trumpeter, and it should be easy to make the transition to French Horn. Logical. Right? In this case, logic won.
Getting recognition as a stellar horn player was no easy fete, but she did it. After auditions, she looked at the seating chart and asked the former First Chair to move down one. Oh, the look on his face. Incredulity and shame mixed in one surreal moment.
To his credit, he set his mind on challenging for the First Chair, but it never worked. He may have had more air to push through the instrument, but he could not produce the sweet haunting notes that Casey could. Well, that’s not quite true. There was one time during a special concert that she produced the most horrendous sound that anyone could have done, worst solo ever, and that’s no joke. All heads turned to stare at the French Horn player that sounded like a wounded calf. All she could do was cradle her head in the hand that supported the top portion of the horn.
How do you recover after a humiliating performance? You just do. And maybe laugh about it. Sometimes being able to see the humor in it works. And time passing. Time and humor work great together. And let’s not forget memory loss. Time, humor and memory loss….

[word count: 235]

I entered this is the Daily Flash because the prompts fit perfectly.
It did not win. This judge prefers fantasy and has her favorites.