Band Geeks

Saturday evening we attended our first-ever marching band competition as non-band members.  Back in the day, you could count both Adam and me in as band geeks. Adam played trombone all through high school and sold his precious instrument when he graduated (either that or solicited donations to watch him drag it down the street behind his car--I can't remember if he carried that through or if it's just one of those fantasy sequences).

I was a proud drummer in the Junior High Marching band (holla if you can still play the snare part of Magnificent Seven!) but was reduced to bells/triangle/chimes player my freshman year.  That's kind of another story, but the short version is I had a new band director who thought only boys could play snare and bass drum and girls should play the easier/prettier instruments. When I wanted to try out for NW Iowa Honor Band, he only let me audition on xylophone and timpani and I think it shocked his socks off when I was selected as a freshman and given a snare part. I ended up quitting at semester before the Honor Band performance because I felt my 4th period could better be spent in class than playing exactly 4 notes on the chimes in "Take My Breath Away"--the entirety of my instrument assignments for the Winter concert. Thank goodness he only lasted a year, but it turned me off to band for the rest of high school.

By Junior year, I got talked into joining the flag corp (main selling point=it got me out of P.E.) and participated in that for 2 years. And by participated I mean I wore black spandex and a stretchy gold sequined head band and waved a flag and/or homemade rings with streamers on them in semi-unison with 7 other girls who took it about as seriously as I did.  We were really not good, but it wasn't totally our fault since we had no choreography, advisor, or director and were pretty much left to our own devices (i.e. made trips to Cenex for Laffy Taffy and Crystal Light when we were supposed to be practicing in front of the windows). We did have fun, but good we were not.

My best memory of Senior Marching Band was being targeted by unknown hooligans launching water balloons at us from a nearby junk yard, watching the director chase a classmate around the football field on foot, and all of us getting in trouble by the principal for someone whistling at another school's flag girls out the bus windows (it might tell them sometime if they automatically assumed the whistlers were being sarcastic in their cat-calling). Good times.

So I guess what I'm saying is, I was far from a model band student but was willing to give "band fan" a shot for the sake of supporting our school.  The event in Orange City was well-run and was a fun atmosphere. I enjoyed our school's show and thought they did an excellent job!  (And their flags would wipe the floor with my old crew). Ryan's not a huge fan of sudden large sounds and the subtleties of the formations are kind of lost on him, but he was a trooper and hung in there for 4 bands. Maybe when he's older we'll stick around for the fireworks!