Gratitude essay: Marching Band

High school was, for much of its duration, a drift through frightening and alienating unknowns for me. Throughout it all there was a bright thread, one that brought me a consistency of schedule, of friends, of authority figures: marching band. 

In retrospect, I’m surprised I signed up for it. My sister joined on two years before I entered high school, and brought back horror stories of the band director’s rigor and abrasive treatment of students. Yet he chilled out quickly, and by the time I joined, he had achieved a balance which I found admirable, of no-nonsense authority and laid-back charm. He’d have us march through a passage five times, and deliver brutal criticism the first four times; then, as we panted for breath in the ensuing silence after the fifth run, he’d look at us inscrutably through his sunglasses on top of the high platform he had to stand on to watch the show, and suddenly deliver a joke, or a random anecdote that broke all tension.

Marching band was the first place where I really had to apply some discipline to my life - a willingness to stand outside in the summer heat, marching down roughly-painted yardlines hour after hour; a willingness to spend November nights sitting on the cold, hard bleachers of the football field, impatiently jiggling instruments and rubbing handwarmers to get to halftime. These things I did, begrudgingly, with as much fudging of the rules as the authorities would allow; still, slowly, seeds were planted. Everyone there was riding the same line, complaining about our uniforms as we dutifully put them on, muttering about skipping rehearsal as we continued to show up.

What we didn’t articulate, being moody teens, was how fun it was. You worked for months, and when you showed up at a competition, there was something actually at stake, a performance you’d practiced to be able to deliver, a palpable sense of anticipation as everyone filed silently onto their starting positions at the beat of a single snare drum. Twenty minutes later, it would all be done, and you could strip the uniform, grab food from the concessions stand and laugh with your friends in the bleachers. Maybe you’d even bring home a trophy. We performed hours away from home some weekends, and the bus ride back would stretch late into the night. Those long rides back were some of the most peaceful of my life: the day’s work done, slipping into a reverie and staring out the window as I listened to albums on my iPod that would become lifetime favorites. (I was just discovering iTunes around this time.)

Then, there were the excuses for vacation: a competition at Virginia Beach that turned into an overnight beach-trip. I shared a room with my friends in the trombone section, and we played cards and drank root beer (our band director, peeking in our room and seeing the bottles on the table, with typical deadpan delivery: “look, they’ve got beers in here!”). For you hardcore fans, the original cover of Katzenjammer (is it still on the net?) came from that trip.

Twice, we managed to get booked to march in the New Year’s Eve parade in Disneyworld. For a few hours of marching, we got a whole week loose in the parks, and managed to live out a thousand dramas, in-jokes, meetups and breakups, a whole life lived in miniature within the Magic Kingdom. The second time came my senior year, and felt like a wistful cap of my high school experience, as friends came together and drifted away amidst the strain of excitement, insufficient sleep, and the nauseating blend of park food and soda. There was pain, there was magic, and then it was over. All that was left were those seeds of diligence, and the memory of its reward, which slowly took root as it fell into the past.  At the time, it felt like a whirlwind that was destined to happen; now, I look with gratitude at the adults who made it happen: the parents who paid, chaperoned, and volunteered for events; the director and staff who got up earlier and left later than the kids; the bus drivers and park attendants who blended into the background in our eyes, lost for the moment in our young world. Thanks, all, for making high school liveable.