Daily routines are something we all have in common. Waking up, getting ready for work, going to work (whether we drive, take a bus, or walk into the next room to teach a piano student), coming back from work, eating dinner, maybe watching a little television. Everyone has a routine they choose to do each day. Wiping nose prints off my window has been part of my daily routine now for years.

Every morning when I go downstairs to the studio to teach those “early-bird” students, (you know, the ones who don’t seem to mind that early lesson time because they are asleep through half of the lesson anyway), I get to watch the sun come up and shine through the window heralding its arrival. It’s a beautiful sight, and as I stop to reflect on it, I appreciate it being part of my daily routine. First the trees are silhouetted against the light pink dawn of morning, with more color slowly appearing, intensified in the first light as it begins to filter through the window glass, welcoming us to the new day. Then the nose prints appear. Four to six smudgy little nose prints on my window. As I continue to listen to the technical exercises played by my first, still yawning student of the day, I reach for the Windex and a paper towel and prepare for war: the alienation of the nose prints from my window. It happens every morning. How do they get there in the first place?

Invisible until the sun is up, the nose prints survive overnight. I can’t see them on the window at night so I don’t attack with my cloth and spray until morning. Even if I tried, I would miss some from lack of visibility. The mystery they create isn’t hard to unravel once you examine the height. They seem to be from a person or persons three feet to four feet tall. Using the “little grey cells” as Hercule Poirot would do, this would suggest that they were made by a very short person. Deducing further, the fact that they are on the window of a piano studio would strongly suggest a child’s nose made them. At this point, I could have the prints dusted or tested for DNA to determine the culprit or culprits. Only thing wrong with that, it would make a bigger mess on my window and guess what? I ALREADY KNOW WHO MADE THEM! It was my last group of students from yesterday evening, peering out of the window at night to see if their parents were there to pick them up, smudging my clean window with their noses.

Oh well, what can you do?
It’s part of their routine, and routines are what make the world go round. (And you thought it was love).