Hey, did any of y'all know has a Marching Band category?! AAAAAHH! This ROX! Yeah…what follows is a mostly true account of what happened to me and my friends during band camp, and into the marching season. Read on and be amazed! (OK, not really, lol!)

October 2nd, 2004-Columbus Marching Contest

"Gah…6:00 a.m. Waaaaaaay to early to be putting in my contacts" I muttered, as I struggled with the stupid little soft blue disks. We had to be at school at 6:30, so we could load the buses, and take off by 7:15.

Now, don't get me wrong. I LOVE guard. I really do. But Mr. Nielsen is OUT OF HIS FREAKING GOURD. Stupid band directors…

"Hey Meagan" I said, as I walked to the band room, weighted down with two bags, my uniform, and a gift for our flag sisters exchange. "How ya doin'?"

"Uh. Too. Early." Meagan said to me.

"Niiiice. You seen Kim? I got a check for my bag."

"I think she's outside."

To make what is fast becoming boring shorter, I'll skip to the next section. Suffice it to say, don't try to stuff a Moshi pillow into a guard bag. It just…doesn't work.

"BOUMA!" I yelled, wandering around the band room looking for my friend Kirsten.

"What?!" came a call from the back of the room.

"Which bus are we on?!"

"Two, ya dork! Remember? We have Dane…ringing any bells?"

"Oh, yeah! Yeah…I hate Dane."

"ELLA! ELLA BELLA!"

"AAAH! Get OFF of me, Krueger! Too early for the hugging thing."

I stuck my tongue out at her. Ella is one of my friends, but sometimes we get on each other's nerves.

Oh, look at me! Where are my manners?! My name is Elizabeth Krueger, and I'm a guardie at East High School, home of the most kick-ass band on the freakin' planet, and my opinion is completely unbiased, I'm sure! The chick who was just fending me off is Ella, a rookie baritone player. She's all right, but, like me, she's not exactly a morning person. The girl I was looking for earlier is Kirsten, and this is her third year playing mellophone. She's…interesting, let's put it that way.

Then, we have the mother of all band geeks: Mandie. Gah, where to begin? If she's not in the band room, she's in the guard/trombone room practicing one of the two dozen instruments she plays. Yes, I said two dozen. Told ya she's a band nerd.

But anyways…back to the bus. It was overcrowded, 'cause it was carrying 30 people, their uniforms, their instruments, their hat boxes, and all the color guard crap. Our flags, thankfully, were on the U-Haul with the pit equipment.

"Morning, Mandie" I said, tripping over Dane's mellophone while trying to find an empty seat (there weren't too many left).

"Ha ha, Krueger tripped" came the voice I never like to hear.

"Shut up, Dane" I muttered, plunking my stuff down about two rows back from my friends.

"Just because you're clumsy, don't take it out on me!" he said, having a laugh at my expense. Like always.

I rolled my eyes and got out my CD player. I noticed the window had some frost on it, so, being the genius I am, I wrote 'Columbus or Bust' backwards on the window that the other band morons on the other band buses could read it if they looked out the window. Which they probably wouldn't, but you never know.

I was in the middle of 'Love Me For Me' by Ashlee Simpson, when I noticed Ella had turned around and was trying to get my attention.

"What?!" I said, pulling off the headphones.

"Ya doin' OK back there, Krueger?" she asked.

"Yeah. Me, my music, and some reeeeeeeeally depressing thoughts I've been having lately."

"OK. Good for you."

Why does she even bother?!

I kinda drifted in and out of dozing, until about 8:30, when I got uber-bored with my music, and moved up a couple rows to talk with my friends. And Dane, but he doesn't count.

"Hey guys" I said, sliding into a seat which had a few flutes and some hat boxes on it, but I didn't really care.

"Ummm…could you please not sit on my flute?" said a dark-haired girl in the row behind me.

"Oh, God, I'm sorry! I didn't see it there. Yeah, I'll move" I said, getting up and moving the flutes over so I wasn't sitting on them any longer.

"Thanks."

I turned around to find Mandie glaring at me. "What?!"

"You sat on an instrument?!"

"Shut up, Mandie."

We passed much of the bus ride like this, in friendly bickering, until about 9:30, when the guard had to start getting ready.

Now, I've you've never seen a guardie get ready, it's a long, complicated, and (sometimes) painful process. Read Memoirs of a Geisha, and you'll have some idea of what I'm talking about.

And then, the mother of all disasters:

"Meagan!"

"What?"

"I forgot my make-up!"

DUN DUN DUN! I could almost hear the cheesy drama music.

"Elizabeth!" Gulp! "Come get your hair done."

Oh. OK. I can handle this. So I sat down and allowed Amanda and Sally to put way too much gel in my hair, and complain about how it was too thin, why was it layered?, and-of course!-they needed more gel.

Groan.

But, through some miracle from God, the other girls allowed me to use their make-up, so I ended up using Rachel's blush and mascara, and Beth's lipstick and eye shadow, a rather interesting hodge-podge, considering Rachel is African-American, and Beth is maybe a shade tanner than me, but not much.

We finished the rest of the ride in relative awakeness, and when we arrived in Columbus (Nebraska, not Ohio), what was the first thing we did?

Spy on the other bands, of course.

What else would we do? Among some of the more interesting things we saw, we saw a guard with a male member, a relative rarity around here.

"Ladies and gentlemen, that, there, is a flamer" said Matt Huntoon, resident chauvinist (but Dane's a close second), and all-around asshole. I rolled my eyes, and continued to help Brandy pin up the sheet, which would divide the bus in half so we could change in some semblance of privacy.

Now, let me describe our uniforms to you. They are all one piece, black spandex, they have a dropped waist that hits a tall person about the middle of the abdomen, and they have (shudder) sequins. They are ugly, tight, and WAY too thin for October in Nebraska. Which is why I was thanking the Marching Band gods that Amanda was allowing us to wear our guard jackets over our uniforms. We were still freezing of course, but it was better than nothing. I probably should also mention that our gloves had no fingertips. The band gloves did, but they were thin, white cotton, so they weren't much better off.

We were doing our work for 'Tonight' in the show, which meant we had to march in parade block, in front of 26 very loud trumpets, who all the meaning of the word fortissimo all too well. On the upside, our parade wasn't until 10:00 a.m., which meant I could chat with my friends in the mellophone and baritone sections, which were directly behind the trumpets. There, I taught my friend Mandie how to do a dropspin.

Now, let me describe Mandie to you. She's about 5'10", 215, 220 pounds, and her hair is never in place. It was, however, somehow pinned up under her band hat. And here she was, doing a dropspin (doing it wrong, to be truthful), and looking ridiculous. But it was all in fun, and we were all laughing, herself included.

"Elizabeth."

"Yeah, Amanda?"

"Don't spin."

Oops. "Sorry, I'll stop now."

She gave me a rather tight smile, and went back to talking with Kim and Molly, the captains.

"Bloody superiors" I muttered, rolling up my silk.

I'll spare you the boring details of us standing there and talking. Suffice it to say, the techniques used to try to warm up my fingers (which were turning bright red with cold) were sometimes…interesting. At one time, Mandie had one, Kirsten had the other, and they proceeded to start conducting like a drum major, still holding my hands.

At different speeds, I might add. Yeah…

Anyways, the parade time eventually rolled around, and we got into formation. Mandie's nose was so high in the air, it rivaled Mt. Everest. But Mr. Nielsen always says, "If we want to be the best, we have to portray the image that we are the best. Noses in the air!"

O…K.

We were actually on a side street, which meant we had to march over to Main Street, where the parade was taking place.

'OK' I thought. "Just remember, when this is over, you get to go have lunch. Preferably something hot.'

I'll skip the parade, and just say that we did all right, but I managed to hit Brandy in the back of the head with my pole about three minutes into it. We knew we weren't gonna win any awards for parade, but we still gave our best shot.

So, we got back to the bus, changed, and went in search of lunch (read: junk food). I went with Mandie, Kirsten, Ella, Tiffany (another friend of mine, a clarinet), and along the way, we met Kirsten's sister, whose name is also Elizabeth, a mellophone whose name I can't remember, and Elektra, nicknamed Ele. We had originally intended to go to Valentino's, but there was such a huge line, that we decided to go to Super Saver instead. And let me tell you, you do not let teenage girls with money loose in a grocery store. I bought a box of Ritz Bits Sandwiches with cheese, two bottles of Diet Pepsi, two packs of gum, a Lunchable, and a bag of orange and black M&M's. The others bought similarly unhealthy junk, Ele even bought a box of Pop-Tarts and by the end of the day, she'd eaten them all. Gag. I like Pop-Tarts too, but not that much.

After we'd finished eating in the shadows of our locked buses, we loaded back up, and drove over to Columbus High to practice our whole show. Tedious, boring, muy abburido, how many other ways can I put this? We went off by ourselves for awhile, where I learned I was fluffing through the movements, and I had to lean into them more. I sometimes bloody HATE guard. And during the run-through, I managed to tick off Beth by being ONE bloody step out of place. So shoot me. It happens to the best of them.

After the run-through, we loaded up again, and drove over to Pawnee Park Stadium, where we changed on the buses-up went the sheet again!-and then went over to a park so we could warm up. Now, we couldn't see the band, but we could hear the drumline, and I saw the flash of gold off what I was pretty sure was a saxophone. I listened to the drumline for a moment, and after a while, the basses seemed to be playing in time to the rapid beating of my heart…whoa. I just waxed poetic.

Anyways, by this time, we'd met up with Kim's mom, who's the guard mom, and she carries around this big-ass bag of hair stuff and makeup, for silly people like me who forget theirs. So I re-did my makeup, and-oh, joy!-had more gel put into my hair. Then we gathered up our flags, stripped them, and waited for the band to join us so we could march over to the gate, and–oh boy!-wait some more.

DUN DUN DUN…

And the moment arrived…our performance time.

Now I'm telling you, the best snare player we had couldn't play a beat to keep up with the tempo of my heart. It's just…not possible. We had to all stay in step as we marched onto the fail, and when the drum majors blew their whistles, we had to snap to attention and yell, "ONE!" as loud as we possibly could. Silly me, I forgot.

Anyways, we then had to mark time four counts, then run onto the field and set our flags as fast as possible, then run to our first drill spot, lie down on the ground, and freeze in that position.

All in all, our performance went rather well, I thought. Anna dropped her flag once, but she recovered rather quickly, and got right back into it. And I was off-rhythm once or twice, but everything was pretty damn good, if I do say so myself.

After the performance, we gathered up our silks and marched off the field. We met our coach around the corner of the stadium, and she said that 'Maria', the opener, was the cleanest she'd ever seen it. This made all of us very happy, natch. Then we loaded up our flags back onto the truck, and went back to the buses to change into more comfortable clothes. We then had to go back to the stadium for the awards presentation, in which we already knew we were going to get a One, most likely. We haven't gotten a Two at Columbus for nine years. Let's not break the streak now.

When we got back to the stadium, Columbus was just marching onto the field, so we sat through their performance, the theme of which was 'James Bond 007'. They were pretty good, but one chick near the front kept getting a wrap, and I was laughing at her.

Eventually, they finished their performance, which was good, 'cause I was on the verge of throwing up from looking at their outfits. SKINTIGHT black pants, they literally left nothing to the imagination. Finally, it was time for awards. Classes A, B, C, and D had already had theirs at about 3:30, so it was just the AA bands. I wasn't really paying a whole lot of attention, but I clapped politely for all the bands, because, after all, I was representing my school. We were one of the last to perform, so we were near the end. As everyone thought, we got a One, and so did the guard. Then, it came time for the special awards. Best Guard, Best Drumline, and Best Band. These awards are given out regardless of class, so, in theory, a Class D band could win. The first one given out was Best Drumline. It went to Omaha Burke, which was odd, 'cause usually Lincoln High or us win. The next one was Best Guard, or Auxiliary, as they called it. I crossed my fingers, and looked at Meagan, who was sitting behind me.

"And the award for Best Auxiliary goes to…" said the announcer, pausing for effect. I crossed my fingers. Please, oh please, oh please…

"Lincoln East!"

I was jumping up and down, screaming my head off, and slapping fives with everyone around me. Finally, after we'd settled down, they announced the award for Best Band. It went to Fillmore Central, a Class C school that not many people had ever even heard of.

We stopped on the way out of the stadium to get something to eat, then headed back to the buses for the two-and-a-half hour drive home.

Back at the buses, my friends were congratulating me, and I think they were genuinely proud of me. They know how I much I love it.

The ride home was much more fun than the one there, 'cause we were all wired on adrenaline and sugar. About halfway home, we started vocalizing 'Tonight', 'cause we had nothing else to do. Everyone sang their instruments' part, and I just did whatever I'd heard and could sing from memory. This kinda pissed off the guard in the back of the bus, but none of us really gave a damn. We told some rather dirty jokes, hashed and re-hashed politics, and just pretty much gabbed the whole way home.

When we rolled back into Lincoln around 8:30 or 9:00, I was ready to take out my contacts and go to bed. But I had to put away my flags, gather up all my crap, etc. Also I had to remind my friend Eric (whom I have a huge-ass crush on) that his ride was about to leave without him. Thick-headed drummers…but I digress. Then I called my dad and told him that we were done, and could he please come pick me up? Then, when we got home, I told both of my parents that we'd won best guard. They were, as expected, uber-proud of us. I then told then that the guard was going to Spaghetti Works tomorrow to celebrate, and they said I could probably borrow some money. I went to bed that night, very tired, but very satisfied, and a tad bit smug that we'd beat out Lincoln High for best guard.

I fell asleep almost instantly.

A/N: So, that's my story. I'm gonna do this like a series of diary entries, they won't all be as long-ass as this one, this one was just really important to me. Anywho…I hope y'all liked this, please review!