School Stories
My experience in High School Marching Band
I never liked P.E. (Physical Education) class back when I was in middle school. Sure there were some really fun activities like archery and basketball, both of which I had some decent skills in, but I hated the typical day for P.E. You go to the locker rooms and change into gym clothes, using crappy lockers that were easy to break in and have your stuff stolen, the smell was awful, and you had to change in front of everyone. You then had to go and do all these physical activities like running, push ups, and other nonsense that I didn’t want to do. Then right after, you’d go back to the lockers all sweaty and have to change back to your school clothes. It was a real annoying thing for me especially as a loner back in middle school. Luckily I was already well established in Band activities that I was qualified to do Band again for high school and I would be exempt from doing any sort of gym class again. Thank goodness so I thought.
As a reference to my first post, I was already in a shitty mood by the time I had to begin summer camp for marching band right after dealing with the shit show that happened with STEM camp. Next thing I know, I’m being forced to run laps, do pushups and do all this gay military like shit in late July during the hottest season of the year and humidity so bad, it would make a Vietcong soldier faint. In other words, it was balls bustingly bad. I barely had any stamina the first week of practice and the week after, I had a heat stroke during our sectional practice. Of course, being the weakest freshman of the bunch, it was only I that had to get a heat stroke. I ended up being put on a stretcher and spent a night at a hospital being pumped with fluids and shit. Fucking awful. I had to go to a doctor to check on my health and they couldn’t even figure out why I couldn’t handle the heat. I was advised to not do it anymore which I would had done if it were not for the arrogance of my parents who wanted me to continue band for some stupid reason I don’t even remember or care for. So, I ended up going back to practice, missing out a couple of days of very important drills, which meant I had to catch up and work even harder than I already was on the first week. Fucking hell, it’s just gay marching band. I didn’t join the Marines. I would continue to get sick during outdoor practice but it was usually taken care of by drinking lots of water and vomiting. I got a really bad tan and lost a lot of weight every time during marching seasons. This went on for all of my four years of high school. At least by senior year, I was able to know how the program works so I was able to slack off and spare my health without having to worry about losing progress in drills and music.
Of course, that’s not the worst part of it all. I found most if not all of my bandmates, both within and outside of my section to be very insufferable, annoying, and often dicks. Since I played Alto Saxophone, I was grouped in with the “lively” part of the woodwinds. Not to say the other groups were any better though. Allow me to briefly describe each group:
Flute players were entirely all girls, except for one pissed off Asian guy who was probably in a similar position that I was. He seemed alright in my book. The girls in general acted like they were better than everyone else and often thought highly of themselves. Probably the preppiest of all the girls in band. On a side note, my high school crush was a flute player and if I had to be honest, she didn’t fit that bill at all, though that’s just an exception to the group as a whole.
Next were the Clarinets players, a mostly weird bunch if I say so myself. Most of the girls that played clarinet would fall under the categories of scene girls, attention whores, artsyfags, lesbums, and other wierdos. Ocassionally, you would get one actually good clarinet player (since 99% of them are arguably the worst players in the entire woodwind section), but they would usually move on to play oboe or bassoon as if to get away from the cancer that is the clarinet section. Like flute players, guys are usually not found in this section although there was this one guy who I guess I could describe as being the chill, guitar playing, smart ass who thinks he’s some sort of free thinker cunt. Suffice to say, all the clarinet girls wanted to be with him. Fucking loonies these kind are. I’m absolutely certain many of them grew up to be social justice fags.
Now we move onto my section; the Saxophone family. Good grief. Where do I even begin. For starters, at least in my case, the saxophone section tends to be the smallest of the woodwind section. Perhaps because most people get filtered out from trying the saxophone back in middle school because they think all those keys and side keys make the instrument extremely complex. Truth is, saxophone is just as easy to play as a recorder. It all feels very natural once you learn the basics. With that said, you would think the smallest group of the woodwind section would be the most humble. That’s a fallacy. My section consisted of the most loud, obnoxious, and socially active group in the entire woodwind section. You had womanizers, sub-chads, basically some of the most popular members in the entire band. A complete contrast to what I was. In fact, being in the saxophone section of all things was abnormal since normally, quiet loner types are usually not in the saxophone section. I was an exception to the stereotype and it must have really bugged the rest of my section because they saw me as some sort of wart in their “family” image that they were trying to protray. Not to say they picked on me, I wasn’t bullied by them, but I was often excluded from events that were exclusive to them such as going out to eat, going to the arcade/bowling alley, or having a party after practice. Usually, I was never invited or involved. I don’t really blame them. I wouldn’t want some wierdo being involved with the bros and shit. Unlike the other woodwind sections, girls were a rarity in the saxophone section though we did have a few but they were usually slackers that never showed up to practice or dropped out after a while. I’d never see them at games or competitions though occasionally they were invited to the social events. Talk about putting me down even more so. I guess I can say on a positive note, most of the saxophone players that did show up for practice were very good players. I worked really hard during practice too so I guess that saved me from being picked on by the upperclassmen. It was a tradition for them to pick on and bully underclassmen. More on that later.
I am going to go ahead and mash all the brass players into one paragraph/group since they are pretty much indistinguishable from each other regardless if they played trumpet, french horn, euphonium, tuba, or trombone. Whatever. These sections are the fucking definition of band nerds! Dorky fuckers who have no class whatsoever. It’s like the Saxophone section in a way, but more cringy and somehow even more horny than literal chads and subchads. You know about redditards right? They might as well be proto-redditors at that point. That’s how insufferable they are. Most are really stupid, like really dumb; often forgetting their music and drill instructions on the marching field. At best, you have like five or so actually good players that end up holding the entire brass section in one piece. These “pros” are also very pushy on you and are most likely to pull pranks on you (especially if they are upperclassmen). If they aren’t fucking the color guard (the flag girls who I am not even going to bother to discuss because who fucking cares about flag girls. They are all dirty sluts and that’s all you need to know), they are fucking the girls in the woodwind section. They probably fuck each other too those sick fucks. There are some girls in there too and they tend to be nerdy sluts. All the brass guys are simps to these bitches, it’s almost sad to think about but in all honestly, it just makes me want to puke.
Last but not least you have the percussion section. Technically there are two types to this group. The field ones and the pit. The main guys, the ones in the field, are the wannabe cool guys who think they are chads but are really just a slightly buffed up nerd. They aren’t as cringy as the brass fucks at least. They are probably the ones that are actually physically menacing and could kick your ass if you try to start shit with them. Not very intelligent either. I’d think they are little more than animals. The pit on the other hand might as well be the dark horse of the entire band. These guys don’t have to march like the rest of us so you will usually find the most obese and/or unfit types in the pit. Unlike the rest of the band, these guys usually just stick to themselves. They are alright in my book. It honestly would had been a better place for me in retrospect. Nobody really cares about them and they can just cruise along for the ride.
Suffice to say, I had no friends in band. I didn’t hang out with anyone, and nobody necessarily wanted to bother trying to socialize with me. I was a decent player so the upperclassmen never really had a reason to go after me. Once I was an upperclassman, I didn’t even bother with the underclassmen. I think the worst of it was definitely during my freshman year. Upperclassmen were always trying to pull pranks on you and make you feel worthless. One popular prank involved pantsing. They would try to sneak up on you and pants you in front of everyone. They saw it as something funny though they were probably fags turned on by it considering how they are sick fucks. Luckily for me, I was never a fan of basketball shorts (the type of shorts that were popular for outdoor practice). I always wore cargo shorts since they were proven to be more durable for outdoor activity and were fitted on with a belt. The one cunt that tried to pants me one time attempted to do it but ended up hurting his finger when he tried. He couldn’t pull down my cargo pants since I had it secured with a belt and he ended up bruising his fingers. He quickly became humiliated and gave up. Serves him right. Another thing they liked to do was threaten us if we didn’t give it our all during competitions. They would openly make threats to us but they never followed through those threats. All it did was make me think even less of them for the human trash that they are. As if STEM camp wasn’t enough of an awaking, marching band made me resent people even more. It’s almost as if all the decent people from middle school band disappeared and all the psychopathic normalfags got in instead.
Yet somehow they saw me as the weird one. There was this one time when we were getting listed for one of our trips and we each had to group up into four people so that we can get a hotel room. We were preforming out of town and the competition was a two day affair so we were going to spend the night at a hotel. Since I had no friends, I couldn’t group up with anyone so they ended up grouping me with some random emo guys in the brass section. When they put up that list, I heard those emo guys complaining. “What the hell man! Why did we get him in our group. He’s like gonna be a future school shooter. He’ll probably murder us in our sleep or something man.” I’ll never forget what they said about me. Emos. The scene types who listen to edgy music, calling me weird. I want to say I was really offended by their remarks but at this point, the entire world is fucking clown world. People like to think things weren’t crazy as they are now but personally, I had to deal with a lot of weird shit that never made sense to begin with for as long as I can remember. Perhaps I was weird after all. Really though, all I wanted was to be treated normally. And I never got that in high school, let alone marching band.
As horrible as marching band was, concert season was alright. For starters, it was back to focusing on music only. No marching shit, no outdoor shit, no field trip shit, and all. I could do the thing I joined band for in the first place. Despite having to deal with the same pricks, concert band season was less chaotic and it felt a lot more like middle school band. It could even be relaxing sometimes, even when you are practicing alone during lunch break or after school. It kept my mind away from academics which I needed sometimes.
That’s pretty much it when it comes to my opinion of marching band. It was a brutal drag for me. It made me hate humanity more so than ever. But I guess there was some decent things about it too. I still got to play music, I got to see my crush (though not in person at least from a distance. She always looked cute in her tank top and shorts), I got to travel and skip school days for these band trips, and it made my resume look better. Another positive aspect of it: I also got some nice legs out of it too I guess. I even got a shitty leather jacket that I don’t even wear. God what was the point of it in retrospect. I’d honestly would had been better off in P.E. From what I heard, it was even more laid back than middle school.
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