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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Iāve 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 sonās bandās 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 yearās competition season stretched into mid-November which was fun but exhausting. To everyoneās relief the football team got bounced in the first round of the playoffs.
Band kids were a punchline when I was in school, but itās 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 wasnāt). No one can tell me they arenāt 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 wouldnāt 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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Well, as usual thereās more than a pinch of self-deprecation involved in all of this given that today marks yet another trip around the sun for good old CJF, and Iām now the same age as my father was when he passed, so Iāve been in a bit of a reflective mood.
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Somewhere thereās a pic of my younger cousin, standing/leaning on his head at midfield, body at about a rigid 60% angle, and playing the rather large bass drum for the Johnson City HS band.
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Happy bday! My next one I will be 80. How can that be? I am older than my dad when he died.
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I celebrated my 48th trip around the sun a few weeks ago. Still surprised/aghast I could be that age.
Hell, youāre just a kid.
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Feliz cumpleanos!! Losing a father young is no small thing. I miss mine every goddamn day. Hope your memories of your father are happy ones.
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My darling wife asked me a couple of days ago, How old is our daughter? I told her forty six. She said, no fucking way, that makes you seventy one. And how old are you then? She says, I donāt know.
We were band nerds back when, played sax. Played some jazz bands, then moved on to guitar in a Bluegass band with the guy who sat next to me in high school. Aldine MacArthur Generals.
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Mark is 45; Elizabeth is 42. I say no fucking way to that too.
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Happy Birthday!!
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