They Call Me a Band God

One and two and left right, left right… Honk! I quickly look up to see a woman looking angrily at me from behind the dirty, water-marked windshield of her beat-up Volkswagen. I realize that I’d been practicing my long step (a form of marching) across a crosswalk. Rolling my eyes at myself, I cross to the other side of the street, towards the school building.

I’m headed towards band camp, and, upon seeing my brand new school, am not too impressed. It’s about the fifth the size of my old one, and both middle schoolers and high schoolers share it, while my last school had only high school. I bet there’s like, a one-room schoolhouse in there or something. I miss my last school, my friends, the marching band competitions, the band bus; oh, god the band bus. Our band was 227 kids strong. I doubt there are even 227 kids in this whole school, and as it’s stranded in the middle of Italy; the only american school for thousands of miles, we probably won’t compete.

My mom’s in the military; she’s an intel officer, which means she basically spies on Russian ships all day or whatever. Anyhow, because of this, my two siblings and I basically get shipped all over the world to whatever post the military sends her, and apparently, it’s got to be Italy; she can’t spy on ships from Maryland, near a great big American high school with competitive marching band. This will only be the second high school I’ve gone to, but the fifth school altogether. We never live anywhere more than three years. My mom claims it’s an ‘adventure’ but I’d much rather be part of a big marching band and get the whole american high school experience her definition of an adventure. Besides, I’ve learned that an adventure is basically something that is miserable at the time but makes a great story to tell afterwards.So that’s how I ended up here, at this little shack of a school that caters the tiny American military community here.

I’m crossing the parking lot now, and a girl who looks to be about my age is stepping out of that beat-up Volkswagen I saw earlier. I enter the school into a bright and sunny atrium and realize that I don’t know where the band room is. There’s a mural of a patch of wheat on the wall; like anyone enjoys looking at wheat. Then there’s the front office, a staircase, and several halls leading out of the band room. Soon my question is answered; I hear music, and follow it. It’s a trumpet playing this warm-up exercise, and whoever’s playing it has great tone. I arrive at the band room and look around. It’s about a quarter the size of the last one, and looks more like the sorry mangled corpse of a band room. The xylophone in the back is held together by duct tape and plywood, the stand holder is missing a wheel and tilting to one size, and a kid who couldn’t be any older than 12 warms up on a snare drum that sits on some chair.

Volkswagen girl has her sousaphone on and is starting to get warmed up as well. I almost laugh at the sight of this skinny girl in yoga pants and a tank top with black mascara being practically drowned by her instrument. The low brass section is where all dignity goes to die; it’s inhabited by extreme dorks of boys who never listen and crack a lot of potty jokes. Kind of makes sense; who else would be shameless enough to handle the awkwardly shaped and sized instruments they play. But then here’s this tiny girl with her sousaphone, she was probably not much taller than five feet. God, how does she have the lung capacity for that thing? “Um… you play that?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she answers, and looks at me like “of course I do”. Shoot, I hope I didn’t offend her.

“ You’re the guy who was long stepping across the street right?” she says with this playful smile.

“um…” she isn’t bad looking.

“My mom almost ran over you, you know” then turns around, flipping her hair back this certain way and continues warming up, leaving me to look at the back side of her bell.

I walk over to that other trumpet player I’d heard earlier. He looks to be either a junior or a senior. Upperclassmen. “ hey, in the future you can just come through the back door” he says pointing to this glass door near the end of the band room with a friendly sort of smile. Then he surveys my face “ You’re like really red right now, are you O.K.?” he asks. Shoot, did some low-brass girl really make me blush? Lord knows if she’s even strait… there aren’t exactly many chicks in the low brass section. Quickly changing the subject, I introduce myself

“ So, you must be the first trumpet… I’ll be one of the other trumpet players here”.

“One of the other trumpet players?” he says in a questioning manner, “it’s just the two of us in the trumpet section, plus a few others who are only in concert band”. Back to the one room schoolhouse theory, Italy is going to suck.

“ Well, my name’s Jayden,” I say, putting forward my arm to do that sort of arm bump thing we (the guys) used to do at my old school. I guess it’s not a thing here because he awkwardly grabs my hand and shakes it. We stand there for a second or to before I start “... so what’s your name?”.

“Hunter.” he answers. “Oh, and this is my brother, Sylus,”he says as the snare drum kid walks over.

“You a freshman?” I ask. He looks way too young to be a freshman, but then he definitely couldn’t be any older.

“No, I’m going into 7th grade,” the kid answers.

“They have middle schoolers in this band?” I ask, directing my question at Hunter.

“Yeah,” he replies, “it’s a combined middle high school, you know, so...” Just then a few middle school-aged looking girls walk in with flute cases. They are followed by a girl in a “be a unicorn” T shirt. She must be in seventh grade, but she looks a lot younger; short and thin with wispy hair. The room soon fills of mostly middle schoolers, and it feels like a slap in the face. I went from a big-grand marching band in Maryland, a one that won competitions frequently to being surrounded by midgets.