Free The Gift of Fire by Dan Caro Page A

no muscle on that hand for me to develop. There was no way I’d ever be able to use that nonhand and nonthumb to wield a drumstick. But somehow I had to make it work for me. If I was going to play professionally, I needed to use two drumsticks … so I had to get creative.
    I put down the sticks and dedicated many long hours of thought to solving the problem. The most obvious solution was to somehow fasten the drumstick to my right wrist. The first thing I tried was a leather bowling glove. The glove fit over my wrist snugly, and the leather was rigid enough to keep the stick pressed against my lower arm when I hit the drum. I used the glove for about four or five days before I ripped it off in frustration.
    It turns out that most of the stick would get buried in the glove, and the part that was exposed was too rigid to be of any good—the stick didn’t move at all when I brought it down to the drumhead, and was about as flexible as a steel pipe. I’d quickly learned that to make a decent sound on the drums, the stick had to move freely in the drummer’s hand. So, back to the drawing board I went.
    The origin of the next idea I came up with stemmed from a childhood image of my mother standing in our kitchen attempting to repair a broken vase using Super Glue. Mom had accidentally spilled some of the adhesive on the inside of her arm and then somehow managed to get a large wooden stirring spoon stuck to her wrist. I remember watching her swing her arm around in the air to try to shake the spoon loose, but no matter how hard she tried to get rid of it, that spoon stuck to her like it was an extension of her arm. Eureka!
    I headed off to the supermarket to buy myself a tube of Super Glue. Big mistake. While I did manage to adhere the drumstick to my wrist, a huge chunk of scar tissue and skin was ripped from my forearm the first time I hit the drum. My next idea, using heavy-duty duct tape, was as big a failure as the glue idea and just as painful. I also tried string, rope, and electrical cord.
    After three weeks of trial and error, I was sitting in front of the snare drum when my dad noticed an old tennis wristband lying on the floor. He suggested I give it a try, which I did immediately. I found that the stretchy cotton was too flimsy to keep the drumstick in place— but it felt good on my arm, and that gave me the idea that would change my entire musical future.
    I leapt up from my chair and ran to a drawer where we kept a bunch of rubber bands. I then hurried back to the snare, winding a couple of the rubber bands over the top of the tennis wristband as I went. When I sat back down in front of the drum, I slipped the drumstick under the wristband and swung my right arm up just past my ear, and then I brought my arm down to the drumhead with all my might. The drumstick hit the skin and made a sound, a beautiful musical note, which I’ll never forget.
    I hit it again and again and again: Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! My father let out a loud cheer, and so did I. We’d just found the method that would allow me to make music and eventually become a professional drummer.
    The rubber-band-and-tennis-wristband technique worked so perfectly from the very start that I haven’t modified it at all since the day I discovered it. I’ve had some of the top orthopedic and plastic surgeons in the country suggest other methods, and even had several occupational therapists design prosthetic devices to try to improve my drumming technique, but nothing has ever worked better than a cheap cotton wristband and rubber bands from the kitchen drawer.
    Once I had my right-handed problem solved, I launched into playing with both hands every single day. I practiced hour after hour, until my shoulders ached and my arms felt as though they’d fall off. Each morning I could tell that the thumb the doctors had built for me on my left hand was just a little bit stronger than it had been the day before. And sure enough, when I started playing that day,