Well over a decade ago, one of my coworker’s daughters and a mutual friend of ours stopped by my classroom to chat. While there, they each picked up an instrument—one of which was, oddly enough, a trombone—and began to play around. One thing led to another and I suggested that they come to the house to make some music and shortly after that we found ourselves having making music together every Tuesday night…
Back up even further to a rainy night at an Atlanta Braves game and find Angela and me brainstorming names for our two person band. We’d been singing together for a few years and recorded one CD, so we wanted a name other than Angela and Deanna. We threw out a plethora of names in an attempt to land on one. And the one we landed on was actually the name of a hymn medley that we put together for a church event…
While sitting on my bathroom floor—and I have no idea why we were sitting on the bathroom floor—A and I decided to singing “Amazing Grace,” “I’ll Fly Away,” and “Victory in Jesus” at our event the next day. We entitled the medley, “The Amazing Flying Victory” and it quickly became one of our most popular songs…which I suppose is why we decided to name our band The Amazing Flying Victories, or AFV for short…
Once A joined those Tuesday night music making sessions, AFV found itself with two more members. We went from one guitar or piano and two voices to the possibility of two guitars, a bass, a keyboard, a djembe, and various pieces of non-pitched percussion—with three or four voices…
I don’t remember the exact moment I decided the band needed a logo, but when that moment occurred, Barb was there with a design. We mass produced the design on each of our band notebooks, on our band suitcases, and on our t-shirts—and it was the image on our band CD. So just what was this image? A flying orange fish…
I began collecting orange fish in 2000. I had the privilege of leading a particularly meaningful worship service at camp that summer. During that worship service, I served communion on an orange fish cutting board. The collection started there…
As part of our school-wide incentive plan, classes receive an eaglet when they do something particularly right or good. During the second week of school, I decided that I would award one eaglet per day during the morning announcements. I named this eaglet the D-eaglet…
B sketched an initial design for the D-eaglet that was an eaglet holding a French horn. She also sketched a few other specialized eaglets that haven’t yet been revealed or introduced. Yet one day it hit me: I already have a design for the D-eaglet. B designed it years ago. It is uniquely me. It is simply designed and easy to produce. And it makes me happy…
The band has dissolved. The non-Angela friendships have, too. But the flying orange fish lives on as the D-eaglet. And I couldn’t be more proud.
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