What Makes Us Who We Are
Author's Note: Technically this is my first fic, although I never intended it to be. This is just a short ramble about how much band means to me and to everyone, and it was spurred by a really tragic event that happened to us this week.
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Marching band is more than an organization, more than an extracurricular activity, and more than a bunch of people who you march on a field with. Band is a unit, and a core of people you can turn to at any given moment for a hundred percent support; they are your support, your greatest life line, and your family.
As a first year marcher, be it freshmen or other, you realize quickly that you are part of a tight knit group. It doesn't take more than surviving one away camp for you to be a true member of that group. There isn't anyone who walks in on the first day of school or any day and feels alone. There isn't a single time that you feel you have no where to turn or no one to talk to.
Band people have over a hundred ears ready to listen, a hundred friends to laugh with, and a hundred shoulders to cry on.
We are this way because we live and die together. Though its not just about sweating or freezing with one another, you do just that. All the pain and agony that it takes year after year, and yet everyone returns. If it were easy, everyone would join; if it were impossible, everyone would quit; but that's not how it is. Band is the ultimate life experience. You endure your greatest pain, your most joy, your good times and bad.
From our first rehearsal to after the season's end, the people we march with are our friends and our second families. We practice together for three hours every other night during the week. We spend over twelve hours together on Saturdays. We are hot together and cold together. We get our butts whooped at practice, we get yelled at, and laughed at, and we cry together out of frustration. We win and lose together; always relying on one another for everything.
Every first year marcher considers not marching the year after. Most of them voice this opinion daily. After completing a season however, everyone looks back and realizes what exactly they were a part of. For those six or seven months they worked with the greatest staff and students on earth and had the most fun they could ever imagine. Everyone who doubts themselves reflects on the season and realizes what their time is worth.
So I guess in a sense band is the crazy cult that everyone says it is. I mean, we all wear the jackets and the pins. We speak our own language and see one another more than we do our own families. We listen to and obey one another, though there isn't any written code that says we must. We live and die together, and no one quits. Like a cult or a gang, there is no way out once you are in. Once you are a part of this family, even if you graduate or quit, you are still a part of it. You are a branch of a great organization which rules over so many people's lives.
I don't see us as dorks, and I don't see us as a crazy cult. I see the family and the human essence of what we are. I look around and see everyone dressed up to celebrate our upcoming competitions. I see us standing around in circles during downtime and playing the show, simply because we want to. I see a group of people who wouldn't be connected through any other means; who wouldn't be working together and living together, were it not for band.
Most of all, I see the love that exists between us. I see it when the entire group comes together to support one another. I see it in the attendance of the entire band at our directors' wedding. I see it when we raise money for a friend's lost brother. I see it when we cry together about finals. I see it when we work hard for our director during his absence; when we carry on without him and dedicate our show to him and his lost father and grieving family. I see it during the hardest time of anyone's life; the loss of their parents.
We are a family. We live and die together, and we love and laugh and cry together. We all cried together on November 16. We all worried and wondered and prayed for two band parents who were tragically taken away from us. Alumni and members and staff alike wrote things in their away messages and profiles. We sat together in a room during school and just dealt with our grief as a family. We wore our band shirts to let others know that we are a family and that we are grieving for two of our own.
Though Mr. and Mrs. C didn't march with us, they are still part of our marching family. Their daughters are part of our family, and so are they. We all knew them. They were the most involved, loving people anyone could ever know. Their loss is a loss to our entire family, as well as their own. We all feel this very personally and are struggling to get through together.
Kim, Amanda, and Frank, we love you guys so much.