The Afterlife of a Band Nerd

I'm a Survivor!

August, 14, 2017

  The first day of school was good. However, band got moved from first to fifth period (they're doing a lot of weird stuff this year), so in all of my morning classes I was watching the clock and groaning. In my head, I was going,"Pleasseeeee, I want bannddddd!!! Hurry up, fifth period!!!!"
  Well, fifth period eventually came. I hurried down to band hall and went through the door. I found out where my section was and went to the instrument room to get John.
  Well, another trumpet player that's a good friend of mine (let's call him CS) stopped me at the doorway.
  "Can I talk to you?" he asked in a serious voice. I thought he wanted to tell me something that was worrying him, so I agreed and we went into the instrument room by my locker.
  He then pulled something out of his locker in a rush that was neatly wrapped in a brown, paper bag. It said,"To: Shorty" (his nickname for me since I'm a very short person—5'1). I gaped as I took the gift.
  "Well, open it," he said.
  I ripped open the wrapping to find a music book called "Elementary Harmony".

  I gaped in astonishment and held the book almost vertical when CS told me to be careful because there was stuff inside. I opened it to find a bookmark, some music terms, a letter, and two pictures that he had developed for me. One was this:

And the other was a picture that we had taken in band together. I jumped up and down and hugged him, thanking him for the gift.
  I read the letter at lunch and it was honestly really touching. It brought tears to my eyes and made me laugh at the same time.
My friends could tell I was really distracted because they had to repeat half the things they were saying to me three or four times and I still wouldn't get it. My friend K2So was teasing me that I had a boyfriend now. I was denying the fact.

  So, moving on: we have a lot of changes in band. First of all, The Princess, an awesome trombone player with a fro (who is a boy) moved over the summer 😭😭😭. He was so helpful!! Why did he have to move!????
  On the other hand, Mr. Davis, our new director told us that he might try to get our marching uniforms cleaned. They haven't been cleaned since they were bought, which was like the 80s. So...yeah. I think he also said something about getting new ones.
  Well, now we're getting more real on band grades and chair placements. We used to not have them, but now we're going to have chair placements other than first and section leader and solos that we have to play in front of the whole band. I know I'll have anxiety about that.
  I'll just send a picture of the paper.

Now there's also going to be a drum major, which we haven't had before because our band has only had about 20-30 people.

  Well, we did a head count today and now we have about 40. A lot of people joined again because they didn't like the old director.
  When Mr. Davis was going over with people what they lacked from their instruments, he got to a tuba player who was on the sousaphone. The sousaphone was missing a shoulder pad for marching. The tuba player (who is a boy) said,"Yeah, I need a pad," when the director asked him what he lacked. Well, that was definitely taken the wrong way and I heard Mom (our section leader who is also a boy) say,"what size? He honestly looks more like a tampon person to me." Jazz, another trumpet player, was like,"yeah, he does." So, yeah, XD.
  Also, Mayo (an alto sax player) was asking something in music terms and another sax player next to him named Sam was like,"Yeah, Mayo is basically a music prodigy."
  CS looked over and was like,"Sam, so is Rey."
  I sunk down in my seat and was like,"Shut up!!!" Because I usually don't like being called out. If you guys haven't read my first book, our director thought I was good enough to play with advanced band, so he let me in a half of a year early.

  So, yeah. It rained a lot today. The after lunch classes were good. We don't get out of school until 3:15 though. :/ I look forward to band tomorrow. Bye!

– Rey