That was so wonderful.
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We had a high school band director who everyone liked a lot, but our senior year he left for a bigger school, or at least a different school. I later heard that he’d left his family and job and run off with a 16-year old twirler. Probably hard to get a job in most school systems after that.
Was he any good at blackjack?
I don’t know, I doubt it. As I recall he was Church of Christ, and gambling would be a sin. Last I heard he was running for Congress in Florida.
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That tracks.
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Obscure reference to a comment in a different thread. Sorry.
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Brilliant.
Band directors are the people who keep my business percolating. They are some of my best friends, and they ARE dedicated. High school directors, at least the ones I know, during marching season Aug-Oct if they are lucky, and thru Nov-Dec if they aren’t so lucky (football teams going into playoffs, when directors would rather be playing concert music), get up at 3:30-4:00AM to prepare to motivate their students for a demanding schedule that runs outside of the school day. It’s a lot of work for the kids, marching in the August-October heat, and can be quite the expense for the parents who, if they are part of a competitive, traveling program, will suffer exorbitant band fees for plane trips, uniform maintenance, and other general overhead that a school district might not agree to absorb. This teamwork can however create a life experience with friends that will remain with a person for the rest of their life, as it did in my case. I didn’t have the college experience, and I admire those of you that did, but I just had my 50th HS reunion, and 90% of the folks I’m still in touch with are from band. 1974 Churchill HS SATX.
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Holy shit you’re old.
Old is the train to which one is chained, but you can lock feeble up in a box and put it in the top of the guest bedroom closet.
Is that where you keep the piccolos?
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If necessity happened to so dictate, I could keep a piccolo there next to my shotgun and locked box of feeble.
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Same age as me.
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I’ve noticed that about my college buddies.
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There are a few of us who disagree.
High school band is bonkers now compared to when I was in it just 25 years ago. My son’s band’s annual budget is about $500k, and this is one of the relatively smaller band programs; most bands in the Round Rock/Cedar Park area have $1mm+ budgets. Something like 90% of that budget comes from dues (~$900/student) and fundraising. We went to a competition in St. Louis this year, and that cost another $1k/person. Also this year’s competition season stretched into mid-November which was fun but exhausting. To everyone’s relief the football team got bounced in the first round of the playoffs.
Band kids were a punchline when I was in school, but it’s a fundamentally positive activity with a big focus on academics. They bust their asses during and outside of school hours, and this year alone I saw kids begging to keep marching despite sprained ankles and knees, bloodied noses and lips, and even a suspected case of appendicitis (thankfully it wasn’t). No one can tell me they aren’t athletes.
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The majority of the students I teach are headed into careers in high school band programs (education majors). My students know full well that the hours suck and the pay sucks even worse, but you wouldn’t know it with the enthusiasm they show towards their future. They love it.
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My high school actually let Marching Band count as a PE credit and they also let any band or choir substitute for foreign language credit. I guess they counted learning to read music as a foreign langauge.
Ahem.
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I got the PE credits but not the foreign language credits.
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