And his announcement brought back other memories as well, including one of the more humiliating experiences of my life in Castro's Cuba seven years ago.

I'd traveled there to take percussion lessons - yes, to continue my "mastery" of the congas and other ancillary instruments like shakers, cowbells, gourds and the triangle.

In truth, I didn't go to Cuba because I was interested in the congas; I played the congas because I was interested in Cuba.

I'd met Donna, a music teacher who taught percussion and, once a year, took her students to Cuba to take lessons with the world's great percussion teachers.

Music wasn't my thing. I still painfully remembered when I was in fifth grade and my music teacher took me aside after class one day and told me to just lip-sync; forget about singing out loud, she instructed. My musical aspirations were crushed.

When I took up the congas with Donna, it wasn't to prove my fifth-grade teacher wrong. I just wanted to go to Cuba. I hungered to visit a place where there might not be a Gap or Starbucks or Wal-Mart on every corner.

So when I heard about Donna's annual trip with her students, I signed up for her lessons and rushed to buy my blue-pearl Matador congas. Every Saturday for a year, I traveled 45 minutes to her house for my lesson, waiting for that magical day when she'd pronounce me skilled enough to go south.

During the week, I practiced dutifully, huddled with my congas in the basement, banging away incessantly, drowning out the screams of my wife a floor above who was yelling at me to stop playing the damn things and rent a movie about Cuba instead.

Finally, the moment I'd hoped for arrived. Donna declared me Cuba-ready, and I began feverishly making arrangements. (For fear that some national-security spooks might actually read the Daily News rather than listen to our phone calls, I won't disclose the details of my travel route.) I was so excited about going, I didn't ask Donna too many questions, like whom I'd be going with or what school we'd be taking our lessons at. When I met my six fellow students, I realized I was in trouble. They were all accomplished musicians. And then there was me.

Rather than our lessons being in a large room as I had imagined and where I figured I could sit in the back and hide behind throngs of other students, our classes took place in a small hotel room. We were taught individually by some of the best percussionists around. And I had no place to hide.

So each day as my colleagues, at least 20 years my junior, mastered more intricate rhythms, I became increasingly more humiliated as I tried to move my two left hands without a scintilla of rhythm. I'm not sure exactly what day of my 10-day stay it was when my humiliation runneth over, but I remember sitting on the floor in my sweltering hotel room - a 55-year-old neophyte - practicing the triangle.

That's when I asked myself, "Is there nothing you wouldn't try?" (Apparently the answer was no, because two months later I agreed to become the interim CEO of the city schools.)

When I arrived home, it was difficult to explain how overmatched I was. But a month or so later, my wife and I went to Penn's Annenberg Theater to see the great Cuban pianist Chuco Valdez perform. I quickly noticed that my Cuban percussion teacher was onstage, accompanying Valdez. Incredibly, his hands flew through the air quicker than a hummingbird's wings as he struck the congas at will. That's when, I believe, my wife understood what I'd been through.

AFTER THE concert, I ran up to the stage to say hello to my young Cuban teacher. He grinned as he recognized me and, in broken English, said, "Ah, the human metronome."

While I think he was saying the same thing, he said it so much nicer than my fifth-grade teacher, who had told me five decades before to just lip-sync the words. But I got the message. I haven't played my congas since. *

Phil Goldsmith was formerly the city's managing director. Read his blog at philgoldsmith.blogspot.com. E-mail pgold4110@aol.com.