Thoughts On Tamborines While Driving Home From Church

Most people don't realize it, having slept through history class in school, but the tamborine was originally invented as an instrument of torture during the early years of the Spanish Inquisition. A monk named Manolo Ferdinand de Gallegos y Huevos, inspired by an unsuccessful night of thumbscrews, devised the first tamborine by bending a flexible willow branch into a circular shape, stretching a bit of dry cowhide across this, and then, in a spurt of fiendishness, attaching children's bells to the edges. Gallegos y Huevos, not realizing that history was in the making, then beat upon this contraption while holding it close to the face of one Armando Llorente, who gave out after only three hours and, in his final moments of desperation, freely confessed to Deist heresies, being the incarnation of the anti-Christ, and harboring uncomplimentary thoughts about the Pope's hat.

It has only been in recent years that the tamborine has made the transition from instrument of torture to instrument of music, though some would argue that the cunning little device is determined to keep a foot in both worlds. The tamborine can be frequently found in churches on Sundays, being beaten in the hands of any number of women or small, wide-eyed children who are unaware of what they are doing. The tamborine can also be sometimes spotted in airports, where it is used by Hare Krishnas in order to elicit contributions from passers-by. In such a setting, the higher frequency of beats has a direct correlation to the amount of money given, as passers-by automatically understand that the increasing frequency means that something is about to give: either their sanity or the sanity of the Hare Krishna in question (which generally results in assault and battery with an avocado sandwich).