One evening last week, while playing at the park, the children and I had the pleasure of listening to the high school band practice. It brought back long repressed memories of my own band years. My family lived in Tennessee at the time, and in the middle of my sophomore year I transferred from a small Christian school to a large public school. In the Christian school I had played clarinet for seven years. I was second chair out of four, and that included the lonely saxophone.
Upon transferring to a high school that had a band nearly as large as the entire enrollment of my former school, I was surprised to find that clarinet playing wasn’t exactly my forte. I squeaked and squawked my way through a chair audition as the director sat staring in disbelief. Finally, he motioned for me to stop and called in the assistant director. They listened to me attempt the piece again, and then huddled in the corner with their heads together.
Finally, they asked, “Do you have any piano experience?”
“I took lessons for a few years,” I reluctantly revealed.
“Well, then!” band director exclaimed as though he’d been thunked into the ground by a blazing comet, “how would you like to try your hand at the xylophone?”
My experience with xylophones was limited to my two-year-old sister’s multi-colored pull toy with a red plastic hammer. That seemed feasible so I agreed to give it a shot.
The band director walked deep into a storage closet and came out lugging the heaviest, most massive xylophone I had ever seen. He blew at the dust and then shoved it into my arms while he retrieved the stand. I was staggering under the weight, wondering how I would ever learn to play this monstrosity, let alone march with it.
I faithfully hauled the thing home every night, ever so thankful that mom picked us up in her giant, avocado green LTD station wagon with the wood grain siding, instead of making me ride the bus. After a couple of weeks I was starting to develop a pretty decent talent for the xylophone as well as biceps the size of Montana.
Eventually, the performance we’d been working for was upon us. We donned our red and navy blue tuxedos, complete with ruffled shirt fronts and bow ties. Pride caused me to stand nearly as tall as my bangs. With great anticipation we boarded the buses that would take us to Spring Hill, Tennessee, and the Saturn car plant’s official groundbreaking. The governor was there, as well as news reporters, and television cameras. I played with gusto and enthusiasm, all the while grinning from ear to ear.
Later that evening, my grandparents called from their home in Indiana to say they had seen me on the national news! That was my peak as a xylophonist. Apparently, my band director wasn’t as impressed as Tom Brokaw, so he moved me to the bass drum. When he finally came to realize how truly poor my sense of timing was he asked if I’d be content to just carry one end of the banner.
I proudly carried that banner in the largest Mule Day parade known to man. As we were coming to the end of the route, I gradually started moving to the side of the street, just as directed. In some bizarre twist of fate, my end of the banner crashed into the side view mirror of a car, completely knocking it off of the vehicle.
Band members began spluttering into their instruments, and marching in time became a futile effort. The director gave me a stare so icy and cold that I actually felt chilled in spite of the sun blazing down on my tux. He had no choice but to let me stay for the few remaining weeks until summer break, so he agreed to give me a decent grade if I would sit quietly in the back and use that period as a study hall.
Over the summer I tried my hand at the flag and rifle corps. On the first day of school the principal called me to his office and questioned the black bruises running the full length of both arms. He was concerned that perhaps I was in an abusive relationship. I assured him it was simply the butt of the rifle hitting my arms over and over every time I twirled it into the air and attempted to catch it. Under his advice, I dropped everything related to band and signed up for a vocational course. He said it was okay to march to the beat of a different drummer, but in this case, I’d been marching to an entirely different band.
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