And rehearsals continued as the day of our first competition drew nearer. We finished learning our drill, not without some more Richard-and-Tom craziness that resulted from a lot of boredom. There was everything from making up chants on the commands to a homemade headlight of Richard's to Chinese fire drills. I should write a book: Adventures in Low Brass.

Another evening in mid-September we spent the whole night inside working on music. We broke up into sectionals (brass and woodwinds). Mr. Gunter took the brass into the jr. high band room and Mr. Wilson stayed with the woodwinds in the high school band room. We were playing our little trombone feature in the closer too sluggish, so Mr. Gunter told us a story. "I was walking across the street with my wife," he said, "and the 'walk, don't walk' sign bleeped, you know, for the blind people. Well, one of us, I won't tell you which one, said it reminded us of gnomes jumping up and down in the sign." We all cracked up, and Mr. Gunter said, "I want you to play this section like that." We laughed some more, but the next time we played it it was lighter.

Overall, our sectional was productive and fun, except for me and our two first trumpets, Ben and Sandra, all having splitting headaches. We were all giving about half the normal amount of air. When we went back with the woodwinds, Mr. Wilson led the rest of rehearsal and started to get all over me for not giving him enough sound, until I explained that I was sick.

I got over it quickly though—quickly enough that later that week, I was able to outplay the other two second trombones, Alex and Josh, in band class. Mr. Gunter was going around the room testing all the brass on a section of the ballad, and he got to us. Both the boys could play it, but they were barely audible.

"Come on, you guys," Mr. Gunter scolded them. "I need more sound out of both of you." Then he pointed at me and counted off, and I played. It was just slightly sharp, but it was loud. "You could give me a little bit more too," he said, "but that's more like it."

We each played individually again, and then Mr. Gunter said, "Ok, time for a Battle of the Sexes." Everyone started laughing. I played first, maybe a little louder than the first time. Then the guys played, and their combined sound wasn't even up to my solo sound. Mr. Gunter turned to the class. "Well, who was it?"

"Kelly," they all responded. "No question."

Then of course he tested the seconds against the firsts, and of course we lost. But it was ok, because I'd proved to myself and other people that I could actually play the thing. It was a milestone for me.

We plodded on through heat, cold, rain, sunshine... you get the idea. At one Saturday practice toward the end of September it was brutally hot, and of course I was feeling sick that day. We spent the first two hours inside working on the singing in the ballad. I was almost in tears because I was having so much trouble with my throat. Then when we did get outside to march, I had to sit out a lot of it because I was dizzy, or march without my baritone because I couldn't breathe with my back brace on. And just to make everything worse, Mr. Wilson walked out on rehearsal. Apparently he and Mr. Gunter had made an agreement that as long as we cared and were there, Mr. Wilson would be there. Well, after lunch there were 29 wind players there out of 40, and about 10 of those were late. I guess that showed Mr. Wilson that people didn't care, so he left. I thought it was a little unfair because obviously, those of us who were there were the ones that cared. By leaving, I felt that he was hindering those of us who did want to work instead of punishing the people who didn't care. However, a lot of people got extremely worked up when Mr. Gunter brought us in to the 50 and said, "Mr. Wilson is going home to mow his lawn. He doesn't feel that you guys want to work, and he will be back when you decide you do want to work." He was there voluntarily. He didn't get paid for working with the marching band. The only reason he was there was because he enjoyed it. When a quarter of such a small band doesn't show up, there's not much that can be accomplished with all the holes. So while I was a little annoyed that he had just left, I could understand why. Although we did manage to put music to our closer that day, so we did get something done.

Rehearsals got better and better as October got nearer and nearer. Everyone is always pysched for October because that's when competitions start. September is the boring month because it's not new anymore, but we haven't started competing yet. Anyway, we continued to work hard. We were able to march and play almost all of our show, with the exception of the last half of the closer. I was getting stronger, and holding up the baritone was getting easier. The singing in the ballad was getting louder (it was almost audible). We added visuals here and there to make our halts more interesting. We did our first ever full run of the show, marching and playing. It was killer, but in a good way. We'd worked hard and had earned the right to be tired.

The analogy of Vegas was also born around that time. It was, ironically, the same section as the Gnome analogy referred to—the main theme of the closer. Mr. Wilson came up with Vegas. He wanted us to imagine flashing lights and a very showy style. But then we began imagining Mr. Wilson on stage in a pink dress, which was not a pretty picture.

On the very last night of September we stayed in and worked on memorizing our music. Mr. Wilson (who apparently had seen that we wanted to work and had come back) took those of us who had our music memorized, and everyone else stayed with Mr. Gunter and then came over to us when they had it memorized. I had all mine memorized, so I went with Mr. Wilson when we first split up. It was actually a fun rehearsal. I discovered that I was a better player than I'd thought. The very last thing we did was form a rehearsal arc outside by the flagpoles and play through our show marking time. We made some musical progress, but the real challenge lay in applying that progress on the field.