woodwind players, 2020
I joined marching band in my second year of high school, and it was one of the best and worst decisions I’ve ever made. Above all else, I spent five hours of every Friday pretending to play clarinet and cheering on our unimpressive football team. Over the course of the season I did a few things that should probably stay a secret, but I might as well put them here.
a clarinet
- I lost three ligatures.
- I don’t even know how; they just kept disappearing and I kept buying new ones to replace them. Eventually I gave up and used hair ties instead.
- I usually only played with half a clarinet.
- Until marching band I never had to assemble wind instruments. As a result of this, I was still trying to put all the pieces together when everyone else was already done. So I gave up and threw the mouthpiece on the top section and that’s all I brought out to the bleachers.
- I wore someone else’s hat for the entire season.
- During uniform fittings, I requested the wrong size. Thankfully my friend also didn’t like their size, so we swapped hats and nobody ever found out.
- I spent half of a game in the bathroom with my friends.
- We decided to take a break in the first five minutes and headed to the bathroom to relax for a bit; then we lost track of time and by the time we got back it was halftime.
- I ate seven tacos in one night.
- I originally wanted to stop at three, but one of the kind parent chaperones kept shoving more tacos into my hands no matter how much I asked them to stop.
