The Band Room Clan: A Reminiscence

A post by another blogger has gotten me thinking about the band room days.  I'll decline to mention how many years it's been since I used to hang out in the band room at my high school.  It really was a haven for me and my friends.  We were there before home room, during lunch hour, and sometimes after school, too.  Sometimes, amongst ourselves, we called ourselves the Band Room Clan.  We practiced, listened to music, did our homework, passed notes we'd written during other classes, fell in and out of love, and, oh, yeah, rehearsed.  Concert band and Stage Band with Mr. S.  The concert band also played for Saturday football games, in the stands, thankfully, and marched in the Memorial Day parade.  Mr. S. hated having band practice outside and trying to get musicians to distinguish their left foot from their right and march in time with the music.  You'd have thought it would be second nature.  Stage band (jazz) was so fun.  I'd like to think that our black folders full of numbered music are still in their holders.  I think 59 (or 95?) was my favorite -- Birdland -- because I really liked the trombone part.  Sometimes I have dreams where I'm back at the high school, in the band room.  I'm always there, never in the library or a classroom.  We're all there getting ready to rehearse and I'm worried that I won't be able to play a note.  In real life, I once did something supremely embarrassing.  I didn't have a mouthpiece brush, so would run a paper towel through my mouthpiece to clean out the accumulated grime.  Brass players, you know whereof I speak.  This one time in my sophomore year, a friend of our  choral director, a trombonist, sat with me while we rehearsed the music for the musical Bells Are Ringing.  I couldn't get any sound to come out and was quite embarrassed because this adult was sharing my stand.  At a break in the rehearsal I took the 'bone apart and realized I'd gotten a piece of paper towel stuck in the stem of the mouthpiece.  Good grief!  [This post is a work-in-progress; more later]