Title: Competition Morning
Description: Written for school. We all know what it's like the morning of a competition…
Genre: Humor
Disclaimer: I do not own anyone in the marching band.
Please forgive my mistakes and if you find any, inform me immediately.
Sunday morning, 9:00 am, a high school in a suburb, is a time and place that is usually abandoned and unused, except for today. A group of tired and frankly cantankerous students were trudging into a small and pungent smelling old room, only to find more half-sleeping classmates. Although it was early in the morning, I was filled with an excited and slightly sickening feeling in my stomach. Today was the day of Championships. THE Championships. A THREE HOUR BUS RIDE. With a bunch of other BAND GEEKS. Joy.
Arriving at 8:49, I bolted into the band room, my high waist band pants and suspenders making me irritable. The sad assortment of garment bag, band jacket, and "extra stuff" high school marked bag clearly labeled me as one of the "band geeks." I was proud of it. I tossed myself onto a riser and watched as students were filing into the room, including my best friend.
"Hey Elf," I greeted as my small sky blue clad friend walked in and threw her matching sky blue pack on the floor, She returned the greeting with a small wave and a fatigued yawn while her older brother tossed himself onto a free chair one riser up. I sighed and squished myself into my marching band jacket. Another of our friends arrived soon after, carrying a large tote with her flute case sticking out. A couple minutes later, a red head stormed into the room, and flopped on the carpeted risers. I gave him a friendly greeting, but he just glared in return, so I pretended to slap him in the face. He fell over and didn't get up again. Two more of my friends and fellow clarinetists showed up almost simultaneously; one shorter but older, and the other taller and in my year, who was also carrying a styrofoam cup of Dunkin Donuts™ coffee.
A few loud, desperate beeps came from the door. Turning to it as though it were an annoying two year old eating Cheerios™ and stomping on the pews in church, I saw one of my other best friends and her little sister walk in. I waved enthusiastically at the two part Icelandic girls as they went to put their instruments down with the trumpets and low brass, respectively, and they trooped over, the younger sibling chatting animatedly, while the older one looked politely weary. In the next ten minutes, the number of members doubled, at the least, and the group now was split in two: the half-asleep tiger-like veterans and the nervous gerbil-like first years.
'Oh, I'm so nervous," a rookie whined, turning twitchily to her other first year friends, shivering in her color guard uniform.
It was too early to whine and my sympathy had not turned on yet, so I replied with a mumbled "Mmph."
All of a sudden, my older clarinet friend laughed and choked out, "Look, it's Beetlejuice," as our drum major walked into the musty room.
He was quite a sight to see. He was already tall and imposing, but his costume made him, well, pretty funny. A too-long vertically black and white striped suit hung limply from his body, and dwarfed him. His old, graying band shoes stuck out awkwardly from beneath his baggy suit, and his make-up was fairly laughable. Gray powder was sprayed generously across his normally ink black hair, and white paint covered much of his face. A smattering of green something could be found at his hair line, and thick black make-up surrounded his eyes. He also had a look of hatred and fatigue, so the entire outfit turned out to be fairly comical.
Eventually, a rather short dark man walked into the room, quite late might I add, and stood proudly at the front of the room. He smiled genuinely, only to receive blank stares in return. Sighing, he began to give his trademarked pep talk.
"Good morning everyone!" he shouted to greet us.
A chorus of "mornin'", "hey", "good morning Mr. O," and "ungh" could be heard echoing in the small room. These were the motliest gathering of greetings I had heard since, well, the last competition. The director rolled his eyes and continued with his small speech, which I drowned out with the sound of my own snoring. He soon instructed us to start loading the buses. Unfortunately, the buses had yet to arrive, which meant that we were stuck without a ride. Another fifteen minutes went by before the huge Coach monsters rolled into view. Cheers could be heard from all across the room, including the earlier sleeping veterans.
"Equipment crew, time to work your magic," Mr. O shouted. Elf and two other freshmen got up from their chairs and staggered into the equipment closet. They came back dragging boxes filled with plumes, and giant white plastic poles for the show. Having forgotten to obtain my shako and my clarinet along with my flutist friend, we braved the chaos of the dirty and cramped hallway, retrieving my faithfully waiting clarinet, and bolted into the long school hallway to find piles upon piles of black boxes. I frantically searched for my beloved shako, and found it after three or so minutes. I hugged it closely as soon as I checked that the containment had the lazily scrawled name of the drum captain on it. Once we located my friend's shako, we journeyed back into the B.O. smelling band room, only to find that it was complete and total chaos.
"Ok, drum line, pit, and low brass next!" a surly bass drum shouted over the anarchy. Five or six people left the room with jerky motions, only to return with heavy quads, snares, bass drums, cymbals, one tuba, a key board, and a xylophone. They trudged out of the door and out of sight.
Finally, about a half hour or so after I arrived, the director shouted, "Ok, everybody else can get on the bus!"
A huge pack of wild, stampeding band geeks flew out the door, desperately gripping their belongings. Nudging a few of my friends close to me, I motioned that we should probably follow them, in order to obtain a good seat on one of the two buses. Falling about trying to gather our own "equipment," we plodded out the annoyingly beeping door.
Clambering over each other, we somehow managed to slide into the giant roaring machine. I quickly found the familiar blue pack and threw my stuff down in the window seat. Popping open the overhead compartment to toss my shako and garment bag with my performance jacket in, only to find that it was occupied by someone else's stuff.
Glaring at the older clarinetist sitting in the chair behind mine, I growled, "Move your stuff." He just grinned. Snarling, I pushed his belongings out of the way and stuffed mine in. There was a good deal of grumbling and pushing before the entire band finally squished into the two buses.
"Did anyone see shako number 23?" the drill director blared over the raucous band in an attempt to help a nervous flute. We all shook our heads, but no one bothered to check, which she pointed out. The major consensus was "No," but I couldn't be sure. The flute bolted out of the bus after a quick conversation with the drill director. She returned a minute later with a different shako tucked safely under her arm, and found her seat at the front of the bus amidst chatter in Korean.
I looked out the window, already feeling motion sick, pulling my water bottle out of my bag and holding it to my chest. Soon, the bus jerked into motion and we were off to the USSBA Marching Band Championships on a three hour bus ride with a bunch of hyperactive band geeks. Joy.
There was a panicked gasp. "Where the heck is my saxophone?!"
Hope you liked it!