you said you were a band geek, right? do you have any funny Band stories to share?
okay, i’ve been thinking about how i should answer this all day, because i remember laughing a lot in marching band, but most of the time the jokes were funnier when you were half-crazed from heatstroke and dehydration and your fingers were cramped into the shape of your instrument and everything was ridiculous. but there was one day.
so we were in a huge marching competition–huge for us, anyway, because we were a 3A school whose football team hadn’t won a homecoming game in fifteen years. if we sucked, then our arch-rivals, the hated Tigers (who had the audacity to say that we were no longer their arch-rivals anymore because we literally could not win a game of football) would be 100% correct about us. so we were taking this seriously, especially the flutes, because that’s what flutes do.
so in our section were five people–me, the section leader; two promising freshman ladies; a girl who had played flute her whole life but had never managed to make first chair because she got too excited, and a kid that i will call peter.
now peter was new to music, but seemed really invested, even though his sole mission in life was to prove that he was tough and cool. as a freshman boy in the flute section, peter was not meeting this goal. it didn’t help that our marching show that year was How The Grinch Stole Christmas, and we were supposed to act Carefree and Whimsical on the field. this boy was having none of that.
for the uninformed, when you are in marching band, you are not allowed to be an individual. the beauty of the band is teamwork, and any sign of individuality only draws attention away from the band as a whole. that’s why we wear a uniform. we’re also supposed to pull up all our hair into the shakos–those are the funny hats with the plumes. peter’s hair was kinda that emo cut that just long enough to cover his eyes but not long enough to pull back.
he put up a fight, but finally he said okay, fine, let’s pull back my hair. one of the freshman girls pulls out a few bobby pins and hands them to me.
look. i still don’t know how to do my hair, and back then, i knew even less. this was the first time i had ever held a bobby pin with the intent of putting it in someone’s hair. so i grabbed a chunk and secured it the best i could, and seeing my distress, the freshman starts giving me a hand.
peter’s hair is thick. it’s still half hanging out. we pin and repin. a passing clarinet player lends us three more pins. it’s not enough. all the flutes are messing with peter’s hair. we call out to the saxophones and round up five more pins. there is so much hair, and it’s still hanging out in wisps everywhere. peter is frightened by so much female attention. quick, we call out to the drummer in the pit whose hair is perpetually spiked up like the syndey opera house. she gives us two more. there’s too much hair.
finally peter’s head looks like a hedgehog, we are out of pins, there’s still hair hanging out, but we have to go line up, so we shove the shako on his head and go.
the show goes well. i honestly have no idea where we placed that day, but i remember our director was pleased. i gather my flute players together and say well done all, good horn angles. they’re tired, but glad, so they turn around to go back to the bus and change.
out of the back of peter’s shako is a rat tail of black hair against his neck.
the next show, he came with his hair already pinned up.
