Personal Narrative: My Marching Band Journey

From the moment, “If you miss the next week of band camp, someone else will be marching in your spot,” flew out of my band director’s mouth and slapped me across the face, all chances of having the best marching band season ever disappeared. Freshman year was ruined. At first, I had no thoughts, no expressions, or feelings. Then a melody of “whys?” tried to harmonize with clusters of reasons, begetting a dissonance of buzzing in my head, “Why was I being punished for going on a vacation with my family? Why is this happening to me?” The mental chaos came to an ease and there was finally resonance in my thoughts. I finally understood what my director’s words meant: I would be learning to march the show but I would not be performing the show.

Every second between the end of school and the start of rehearsal was spent conversing with friends, eating snacks, and relaxing because the next two hours would be spent marching back and forth within the same fifteen feet. However, I had taken up a different pre-rehearsal ritual, where I was preparing to march into rehearsal completely refreshed and ready for new instruction. The countless hours in the heat and the taste of dirt might have aggravated the everyday member, but in my head, the time on the field and the scent of freshly cut grass was all I had. I loved it. Unlike the others, I never begged for a water break, not even in the sweltering heat of early August. I brewed up my own mentality about band practices –if I did not march performances, then the practices were my performances. It was during those makeshift performances on the practice field, when it had finally struck me: I have never cared about any activity so much before marching band. Therefore, I was overjoyed every Friday night because I was playing with the band in the stands. But every Friday night, halftime always ripped a fresh hole in my heart because I was never out on the field playing a part in making the crowd