Marching Band

Let me tell you, I know Hell.  Hell is a place of unbearable heat, where hopeless souls are forced into meaningless labor, in this particular case, walk around in bizarre patterns while playing instruments.  In case you haven’t guessed, I’m talking about High School Marching Band.  I had been absolutely apposed to the idea of marching band, because it wasn’t required for my level of band.  Additionally I really sucked at playing Clarinet when I was sitting still, despite my seven years of it prior.  Unfortunately for me, my parents were dead set on making me go.  Now as anyone who has ever been a kid before, knows about the Parental Override Switch.  It’s a small switch installed in every decision we make until the age of eighteen that a parent can switch to whatever they want you to do, and try as you might to switch it back to whatever you want, the switch will never move.  So was the case in my decision about marching band.  
A few specifics on Hell:  Hell was mid-August, from 8:00AM to 2:00PM for two weeks and then the last two weeks they added a practice session from 6:00 to 9:00, then a two week break and then school.  During school we had after school rehearsals and mandatory competitions and home games.  
The first day was for Novices, which was me, all the other freshman, and any idiots that got roped into it after they already seen what it was.  There is one thing that no one ever misses about the east coast.  It is the thing that makes the dinkiest bit of heat or cold completely unbearable.  Humidity.  It makes the summers Incinerating, and the winters frozen.  In the summer you can walk outside and the thermometer will say 70 degrees and as soon as the door opens, you’re hit with this wave of heat will hit you, and you gasp for breath because you don’t have gills, and then your body reacts with a tsunami of sweat.  And this particular first day of Hell was especially wet, and hot.  In fact, we were having code red and orange days the whole time.  Life had become stew, a steaming, boiling stew of sweat, bees, sun, water, and music, and I was nothing more than a chunk of potato.  I didn’t have any say in the stew, not like the beef, I was just there as filler, and that’s what I did.  I never learned the music, I just faked it, hoping with all my heart that no one noticed, and if they did, they wouldn’t care.  It seemed like eternity that we marched every day that summer.  I remember counting the time between water breaks.  One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand…   Then it would come, a little slice of salvation.  But by the time we got to the water coolers, the water tasted like plastic, and salt from people sticking their hands in to get ice.  Still, we gulped it down with zeal, and lounged.  Now being a freshman, I knew no body there, and so I sat by myself, until one day.  I was sitting there one day when this guy walks up and sit next to me on that burning curb.  I recognized him from eighth grade.  He used to laugh at me as he rode by on his bike on our way to our houses.  I used to sit and wait for a friend and we would walk until we got to her house, and then I’d keep going.  He’s laugh at me as I waited at the bottom of a hill next to the school.  Now he sat next to me.  We conversed, and eventually became friends.  I now had another potato to complain to about the stew.  
Now there’s something very odd about the idea of marching band, and that is since it’s not really a display of how militaristic we can be, the drill designers try to be creative.  Designing drill is a job for only math thinking people, because it has got to be the most god-awful job in the world.  You have to put over a hundred little numbered dots into a design, and them move them to another design, all while making sure that the people will physically be able to do it, and in the amount of time there is in the music.  It’s simply the worst job I can imagine, I would, in fact, rather shovel dead babies with a pitchfork than write drill.  So, now I tell you about the drill we had to do.  First off, it had a series of unrelated songs, most without recognizable names, as is everything in the band world, but in the known repertoire was “Old Man River,” and “Turn Turn.”   Because of “Turn Turn” the drill designer though it would be clever to put in a peace sign, but that’s not all, he also had to turn it.  We worked on that the whole season!  It became the very symbol of evil in the world, and then after we turned this thing, my end of it (with me on the end, which is the most visually vulnerable spot) had to break off and almost run into a straight line perpendicular to the bleachers.  Do we get a second to think now?  No!  We have to, in a split second, march straight backwards, horns pointed up to the press box in this line. Now just to give you an idea of why this is bad, I will explain it.  When you’re marching backwards, you can’t see if the people behind you are ok, and you’re marching towards them.  To worsen it, we were all half a step from each other.  Now one step is an exactly eleven inches from heel to toe, I can still do that to this day.  So, we’re close together, tired from the run, and the drill previous to this, and we’re depending on a first-year to match perfect or else an entire line of Clarinets Domino on top of each other and get their horns stuck up their throats.  I’m lucky to be alive today.  
I survived that last month of summer, and I learned the value of sleep.  We went through and had a mediocre season, though our drum line won first place every competition.  Now after all this, you must think that I never set foot on that parking lot or football field again in my life, but I got news for you.  I did.  I loved the competitions.  I loved the bus rides.  I loved the home games.  In short, I loved the band, but not the marching, and I repeatedly went back to Hell for two more years until my job got in the way, and even then I went every home game.  I met the best friend I ever had in marching band, and he used to laugh at me.  I think that’s what kept us such good friends, we never took each other too seriously.  I honed skills that have helped me the rest of my life.  I learned to walk smoothly, and I can still walk with a camera and it looks like it’s on wheels.  I learned to put up with uncomfortable things, like heat, fatigue, and hornets buzzing around your head and landing on your back.  I made friends with an elite group of people that even the normal band couldn’t relate to.  You can always tell who was in marching band after a concert, because they were the only ones that would change into street clothes out in the open in the band room instead in the bathrooms.  In short, it was the best experience in my life… but it was still Hell.