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Why Poeple Do This Crazy Thing Called "BAND"
There is nothing like band camp...the burning asphalt of the school's parking lot containing uncountable drill sets brings back millions of memories from past seasons. Its August and you are sun burnt, sore, and tired from your exhausting summer, which is sadly coming to a close. The horn weighs a million pounds, or at least you swear it does... your shoulders ache from the day before, and the day before that... your skin might as well just melt off from the back to back sun burns you've been getting. Your shoes, that are still damp from the day before when it rained unstoppabley, are soaking through your socks as you trudge across that big old parking lot, or if you're lucky- for once- the football field. Your worn out dot book looks like a 500 year old sea scroll discovered in the Atlantic. The heat is your enemy, and the once-in-a-while cool breeze seems like an angel sent from above. When night falls, and your day of hard work is over, you're relieved, yet saddened that we didn't get everything done that we were supposed to. The morning sun, or alarm clock...some people are different, wakes you up the next morning. You don't know how to feel, relieved or tired, because of course...BAND CAMP ISN'T OVER YET!!! It's now time to go do everything that you've done for the past couple days all over again, you set out for the tiring 12-hour day ahead of you with your best friend...your water jug, and you continue on to the goal... FINISHING AS MUCH OF THE SHOW AS POSSIBLE!!!
It's now midseason and you have been marching the same drill and playing the same music for, what seems like, an eternity. The same instructors have been yelling and glaring at the same people and the same orders have been yelled from the scaffolding above. The same speeches have been said, the same counts have been drilled into your memory. The same idiotic people drive by beeping and yelling, the same days of the week that you've been practicing on since the beggining of time. You still have the same view of the back of your fellow comrade's head in front of you in the same drill set that everyone has marched over and over 50 million times. Sometimes you wish you hadn't survived band camp so you wouldn't have to go through this cycle, but of course- you never mean it.
It's the week before the last competition, you have rocked at some this season- you know to the point where the janitor and the rock wanted to throw babies at you, and then there are some where you wish you could just forget, maybe a *cough* Seminole Sound *cough*. You've been humming your show in math class and marching down the hallway almost the whole beginning of your new school year. Anticipation of the contest looms in the air as you work towards the event which consists of everything you've worked for this whole season. You don't mind the repetition now... you are used to it... you are conditioned to go back and do it again and again and again and again... and you enjoy it, you laugh, you joke and sometimes you get in trouble... you focus again and everything makes sense. It's weird to think that everything you've worked for is coming down to the biggest performance of the season...it'll all be over in the next 11 minutes or so, then you'll never march with those same beloved Seniors in your band again. Some Seniors get excited, but depressed that it is their last performance with...*here it comes over the loud speaker*... "THE SEMINOLE HIGH SCHOOL MARCHING BAND"... you wait anxiously for the drum majors to count off, are you ready??? It doesn't matter, now there's no turning back....
It's the morning after the last competition... you rocked the house... but now there is no tomorrow... you are finished... your season is now complete, all you have left to remember that performance are those hunk-a-junk trophies in the band room that the drummers will probably break next week... yet your stories are endless. You remember the times at rest stops where you and your crazy friend ran a muck, or the time where you crawled inside a comforter and got stuck in there and ended up being dragged out in the hall- no comment on that one. Your laughs and pains from the season, which is now in the past, is only a figment of your imagination. Yet you always hang on to your memories, and especially of your greatest accomplishment... the pride in finishing another season.
~Sandy Sanchez
C/O 2003
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