So, it's been...what, a year since I last updated? Heh. Sorry bout that. If you weren't around when DMPOA first got started, here's your chance! Meet Ryan, the crazy drum major, his siblings, his friends, and the marching band season that will change all of their young, teenage lives. You have laughter, tears, marching,gatorade, card games, and so much more. Welcome to:
Drill Master's Position of Attention
August 23
6:27
PVHS's Band Room
Ryan, from his spot under the piano, groaned. "Blake," he whined. "It's early."
"Yes, yes it is," the band director agreed, smiling at Ryan's feeble attempts to hide. "Now get out of there and help me with the tubas."
The two of them were trying to get ready for the first day of away camp. The rest of the marchers would be arriving in a little more then half an hour, and nothing was ready. The truck hadn't been filled with the large instruments, the rooming assignments hadn't been made yet, and the Drum Major had yet to wake up.
Snore…snore…
Blake just grinned again. Opening the tuba case he was dragging across the room, and reminding himself for the 235087th time to get wheels on the cases, he took out the large low instrument and played a note right in Ryan's ear, who awoke with a start. "Get up," he ordered. "Get the other two cases, and then you can get the pit stuff."
Ryan stuck out his tongue, but did as he was told.
Half an hour later, the truck was finally loaded with the tubas, mellophones, trombones, tenor saxes, baritones, all the drumline drums, and all the pit equipment. The rooming assignments were done, and Ryan was finally allowed to sleep for the remaining three minutes until the rest of the band was supposed to come.
But, as it is with all bands everywhere, there is always some overeager band geek who is early for every practice.
In Park View High School's band, there were two, named Erik and Isaac.
When Ryan saw them, he groaned. Again. "Go away," he moaned. "Why are you here? Annie! Make them leave!"
Erik and Isaac, being….well, Erik and Isaac, immediately started running around the band room, throwing things and yelling. Annie and Jake smiled sympathetically at their older brother, who was trying to stuff himself as far under the piano as he could go.
A crutch to the side of his head made him roll back out, though. Ryan glared at Max, who just grinned back at him. "Roomies?" Max asked.
"You know it," Ryan confirmed. "Charlie is with us, too, and Tyler. We're special; we get the only guys four room dorm. Aren't you glad you're friends with the drum major?"
"Friends?" Max scoffed. "I just use you for the perks."
Ryan rolled his eyes at his friend, but grinned when Charlie and Tiffany walked in, hand in hand.
"Oh, Ms. Tiffany," Ryan sang out. "Do you want to know who you are rooming with?"
"Hannah, Annie, and Abby."
"Darn you!" Ryan groaned. "I was going to bribe you with information to make the tweebs shut up."
And indeed, Isaac and Erik were being annoying. Again. Tiffany was the only person they listened to, so Ryan and Annie, and even Jake once or twice, were always going to her to hush the boys up.
"Are they rooming together?" Charlie asked.
Ryan nodded. "On the other side of floor from us. Oh, hey, gotta go do announcements…"
Hopping up on the podium, Ryan beamed down at the band. "Ok, gang. Here's what's going on. The high school we're staying at is about an hour away. The sister of our principal is the vice over there, so we get to be cool and stay there for a week. Your rooms will have anywhere from 5-8 people in them; guys on one side of the school, girls on the other. If you are found purpling, YOU WILL BE PUNISHED."
"Purpling?" a freshmen boy asked his neighbor.
"At the hospital when babies are born, what colors are boys?" Ryan asked with a smile.
"Blue."
"And girls?" he continued.
"Pink."
"What color do you get if you…squash them together?" Ryan grinned, waggling his eyebrows.
"Purple. OH!"
"That's purpling for ya. Anyways, we basically get free reign of the school. The showers in the locker room are ours, so please, shower. Um…you'll get your room assignments when we get there, and Blake wanted me to remind you all that if you wear any inappropriate clothing, you'll have to wear the clown suit and do the chicken dance, so please, be decent. Girls, this means no tank tops, bras at all times, shorts that don't show every curve of your body, stuff like that. Guys…wear belts. Please. I really don't want to see your boxers. No going shirtless. Everybody, wear good marching shoes. Because marching in flip flops is just plain dumb. And we don't want to be dumb, do we? Anyways. You'll find out your room and stuff when we get there….so, everybody! To the buses!"
8:30
On the road
"Ryan," Isaac whined to his older brother, "I'm bored."
The band had been on the road for a little more than an hour. They had been split into two groups to fit on the buses, with Ryan being in charge of one, and Max and Blake in charge of the other. Luckily for the drum major, he had gotten stuck with both of the twins, who had decided to sit behind him and annoy him the whole time.
"I'm going to throw the two of you out the window the next time you make any noise," Ryan warned the twins. That shut them up.
He had finally managed to fall asleep again, a task he had trying to do the entire bus ride, when something vibrated in his pocket. Jumping up a foot in the air, having been startled, and ignoring the twins' laughter, he answered his cell phone with a sharp, "What!"
"Down, boy," came Max's chuckle from the phone. "Blake wanted me to tell you that we're almost there, so make sure the kids on your bus know the routine. Bring up suitcases first, then instruments to the band room. They'll come back outside to get their ro - "
"Max."
"Yeah?"
"I'm a drum major."
"I know."
"Don't you think that I would know all of this?"
"Oh. Right."
Ryan hung up the phone with a quick shake of his head, and standing up, whistled loudly to wakeup everybody who was sleeping. "Good morning!" he said brightly to the grumpy looking faces yawning at him. "We're almost at school, so, a few small announcements. The suitcases that are stacked under the bus will be taken off by the equipment dudes, so guys, you get off the bus first and unload them, 'kay? Try not to drop any bags on your toes this time. Then, you all will make a large, ugly looking mop of people while Blake and I give you're your rooms. Yes, you'll be sleeping on the floor of classrooms, so get out all of your moans and groans now. Then, you'll bring your bags and stuff to your room, put them down, hurry your little butts back out here and get your instruments and head over to the band room so we can start practice. Got all of that? Good. Go back to bed."
9:04
Forest Lake Middle School's Parking Lot
"Okay, equipment dudes, do your thing!" Ryan ordered, giving each of the guys who got up and left the bus a big high five. The rest of the bus chattered amongst them for the few minutes of free time they had before the Drum Major ordered them off the bus.
The 50 so band kids huddled together, trying to absorb some heat from each other to battle with the early morning chill. Blake spotted them and smiled to himself. Let them go on thinking the cold was the worst of the weather to come, he thought to himself. They would learn soon enough that the day quickly warmed up.
And quickly warmed up, indeed. By the time Blake and Ryan had finished giving out final instructions and rooming assignments, most of the people were sweating, and it was only half after nine in the morning.
"I don't remember it being this hot last year," Tyler commented to the rest of his group of guys as they made their way to their room. Ryan was lugging both his and Max's suitcase, while Charlie had his suitcase, his backpack full of pit stuff, and Tyler had his suitcase and his case.
"I actually remember it being quite cold for us last year," Max said with a straight face, getting a snort out of Charlie.
It was common knowledge that the band room at the school they were at was always freezing. Because the pit people were in there for so long, they had all brought more sweaters and sweatpants than shorts.
"Ha, ha," Ryan said sarcastically, hitting Max upside the head, causing him to miss a step with his crutch, sending him sprawling on the ground. Tyler, not looking where he was going, tripped over a crutch on the ground, bringing Charlie down with him. Ryan just stood over them, rolling his eyes.
And that was the start of Band Camp.
10:00
Forest Lake Middle School's Band room
After giving the band kids half an hour off to go to their rooms, meet their chaperones, and get out most of their pent up energy, Blake had finally called a Band meeting. He had access to the loud speaker of the school, and had scared most of the freshmen by laughing evilly into it when he first turned it on.
"So, guys," he said, grinning sheepishly, the thorough yelling at several brave freshmen girls had giving him still fresh in his mind, Blake eyed his band from the podium in the band room.
The band was all sprawled out over the band room. Half of them were in sweats, the other half in pajamas. Blake clicked his tongue at this.
"It's already 97 degrees out there," he warned the students. "You're probably going to want to change into shorts. No, not probably. You will change into shorts before we go out, which will be in about ten minutes. When we first go outside, we'll stretch, led by Amy, and then do fundamental marching for about half an hour. We'll start with this every morning this week, just so we can correct any marching problems we see before setting drill. After that will be sectionals, for more, individual marching, then back inside for music practice. After that, we'll go out and set drill!"
A large cheer went up from where all the seniors were sitting, along with a couple "the last drill we'll ever set!" "I hope we have one that looks like a penis again," and a couple of other random memories of drill setting in the past.
"As you can see," Blake continued, "drill setting is fun."
This time, it was all of the upperclassmen who made comments, most of them consisting of telling the freshmen not to believe him, he was lying.
Blake just grinned. "Actually, setting drill is very tedious. I will admit this. It's a lot of repetition, and 'One more time!'s and whatnot. But, it pays off in the end. So, now, go change and meet me out in the field. With your instruments, yourself, and plenty of water!"
10:30
FLMS's Band Room
"And now," Max said, comfortably sitting on a pillow and munching on candy, "we do nothing. All day."
"Really?" Lily asked, wide eyed, declining Charlie's offer of sugar on a stick.
Logan and Sean nodded eagerly, both of their mouths filled with some kind of disgusting thing they called food.
"Well, we're supposed to practice," Max admitted. "But you can only hit a bass drum so many times before it just gets annoying. So, we sit, we eat, we sleep, we ponder the meaning of life in our nice, air conditioned room."
Lily grinned. "Cool."
"We'll go out with the rest of the band tomorrow," Charlie informed his 'little sister.' "But just not today. Tomorrow they'll start doing the drill with music, so we have to go out and play the same twelve measures a hundred times. It's really boring, and hot, and annoying. So, make the most of the time we have in here."
"Amen to that," Logan said, raising his huge water bottle full of soda.
"Who's up for Ratscrew?" Sean asked, digging through his bag to find his deck of cards.
Lily made a face at that. "Ratscrew?" she repeated. "Urg. What is that?"
The pit boys all stopped what they were doing to stare at the freshmen girl. "You mean," Charlie finally managed to ask, "You don't know what Egyptian Ratscrew is?"
Lily shook her head.
"Boys," Max said, giving the three other boys a solemn look, "I think it's time."
"For the tournament?" Logan asked eagerly.
"For the tournament," Max agreed. "But first, we have to teach Lily the amazingness that is the card game of Egyptian Ratscrew. You see, Lily, it's like high tech War…"
AN: If you don't know what ERS is, YOU NEED TO GO LEARN. RIGHT NOW. It is the best card game EVER. Well, after Mao. That game is legendary in my school. We have ERS tournaments all the time, and it's fun to watch the best of the best play. We've even gotten our band director into it a few times.
So, last time you heard from DMPOA, I was in pit, but this season, I'm marching for the first time, on mellophone. So, you'll be getting a lot more of marching stuff, and see a lot more of the marching sections from now on, now that I know what marching is all about.
