Hidden talents

Visiting the ABC Wednesday posts (my ABC-H-post is below this one), I stumbled upon Gone to the Dogs, who, in her H-post has a link to a funny video of her dog howling to some Christmasmusicmakingthing. That reminded me of the following story. About 4 or 5 years ago we had some sort of familygathering at our house. I don't know what the occasion was, probably a birthday. It was a beautiful summer's day (it must have been my birthday then), and we were all sitting in the garden, enjoying the warm sunshine. My sister suddenly produced a mouth organ (or harmonica) from somewhere. She had found the instrument while clearing out the attic or something. Would anyone of us like to have it, since no one of her family could play it? While hubs and I were considering the fact that owning an instrument like a harmonica would make no sense if we could not actually play it, so it would involve taking lessons and we were not sure if the hassle of all that would weigh up to being able to liven up a party, my father, bless him, picked the harmonica up, put it to his mouth and began playing away. He actually could play the harmonica! We didn't know that. And he could play all kinds of different tunes. We all sat there, mouths open, amazed by the fact that my father had been able to keep this talent hidden for us! My mother was looking exceedingly proud. Did you know that? we asked her. Yes, she knew that my father could play the harmonica. He used to do that all the time when they were young (many, many, many years ago). Anyway, Holle, our dog (see the ABC-H-post below), sat next to my father and began howling with him. If my father stopped playing, she stopped howling. When he started a new tune, Holle howled her little lungs out with him. A truly remarkable event that was. Unfortunately my father's lungs are not 'as good as new' as one might say. So he doesn't have enough breathing capacity to play the harmonica and to stay alive at the same time. So no more harmonicaplaying for my father. And no more howling for Holle. It was great fun while it lasted. (This would have made a great ABC-H-post: Hidden talents, Harmonica, Holle, Howling!)