The November Rain (and Armpit Stains)

(to follow The Dream, Blast!ed)

November 17, 2003.

I ascended the uncomfortably narrow aisle to the upper levels of the overcrowded gym. As I looked up the stairs, I could see the cold rain pounding on the window in the distance. It never rains in November. Why did it have to rain today? The sound of the downpour was just a depressing reminder of the sour note on which this season was apparently going to end. Not exactly the end I had hoped.

I turned around in the aisle and glanced down upon 160 of my fellow high school musicians who stood looking at me with their overwhelmed looks. The judges announced that they were ready, and I gave my usual drum major salute. Oddly, a man to my right was particularly impressed, and idiotically shouted at me: "Whoh! There's a lot that's gonna be goin' on right here, isn't there?"

The hell? I was slightly amused, and for a second I forgot the rain. I was about to conduct my last field show, albeit at a rained-out field competition. Right then was probably not the best time for him to be chit-chatting. I shrugged it off, and raised my arms to begin conducting. As I did so, I felt a soreness in my left elbow. Maybe my friend Ben, a fellow senior and trombone section leader, noticed my slight discomfort, because I thought I saw him crack a smile at me from down on the gym floor. A few hours before, he and the other senior guys had given me a rather painful group hug in the parking lot, babbling, "We love you, Paul!", "You're an awesome drum major," et cetera.

I sucked it up, called the band to attention, and began conducting my last show. My swan song. My last performance as the Drum Major of the LCHS Marching Band...



And Flashback: Four Months Earlier.

The whole Band Council was cramped in Amanda's pool house amidst the arid August heat. She was talking about something Band President-related. The rest of the council just stared on, perhaps listening to what she was saying, but most likely once again focused on her notoriously large breas-...uhh, pool house. Yup, her large pool house. It was very well...developed. Maybe even Double Developed.

My mind was elsewhere. Across the room, I noticed Ben, the trombone section leader, scowling at me. I tried to ignore it, but his glare was intense, as if he would stand up at any minute and punch me in the face. Clearly, he didn't like me at the moment, and incorrectly thought I had sold out Virgile, the previous drum major. I had a lot of damage control to do.

We just finished discussing the theme of the show: "The Seven Seas," featuring music by Joseph Curiale. Both Mrs. Hamre and I were relieved to have a new marching instructor, particularly because he wasn't Greg, which already made him an improvement by default. The new guy's name was Mike Freed, and he was a marching instructor at Thousand Oaks High School. I had friends in their band, and I knew they had a strong program, so I was optimistic about the season. Except for the whole part about everyone hating me. Yeah, that sucked.

On the first day of our band camp, I had a discussion with Mike Freed about our plan for teaching marching. It was all very...awkward. In a lot of ways, Mike was the anti-Greg. Now, that's not necessarily a good thing, either. Despite all of Greg's problems, he was extremely charismatic. Mike quite possibly had the intellectual and social capacity of an 8 year-old. "Dork" would be a huge understatement. He was always dirty, spit when he talked, and frequently had snot dripping out from his nose.

I told him that I thought we should spend the entire first week focusing on marching fundamentals, because that was always our weakness. We shouldn't worry about learning the show until the second week, when we would have a good foundation to build off of. Mike disagreed, and explained why. It was something to do with the way Thousand Oaks High School does things, and how wonderful they are, and how he has been teaching for years blah blah blah...but alas, let's remind ourselves that I was just a 16-year old boy during all this. I didn't really have the focus or the patience for his flawed reasoning. Plus, he always did this thing where he talked a lot with his arms, allowing everyone to see his massive yellow armpit stains flapping around. And these were not small stains. They seemed to spread all the way down the sides and back of his shirt. I actually made sure to stand 2 feet away at all times, out of fear that his yellowed stains would somehow spread onto MY clothes. Meanwhile, during this whole discussion, Mike had some assistant guy next to him, contributing nothing to the conversation besides an occasional head nod. To this day, I don't know who or what this assistant was. I guess he was a little man, shorter than me (which is saying something). I never heard him say a word, and after a few days, he simply...disappeared. It's possible he got caught up in an epic Dungeons and Dragons game and is actually still playing it right now.

After our conversation, Captain Pitstain and his pet hobbit walked off together to chat. I heard Captain Pitstain mumbling to his little friend/pet, "This kid is a typical drum major. He thinks he knows what's best. He's in over his head, blah blah blah...," as they trailed off. I'm surprised I'm not permanently blind after rolling my eyes so much that day.

Maybe that's when I realized it. There was a reason we could never seem to get a really good marching instructor. They simply don't exist. Anyone that's talented enough to be good at teaching it would surely have at least a slightly better career. We were always going to be stuck with either an jerk, or a level-5 dungeonmaster with a homemade Agility+2 broad sword.

For the next week, the section leaders and I taught most of the marching fundamentals on our own. Slowly, their resentful glares toward me began to soften a bit. Nobody really listened to Admiral Armpit for the rest of the season, and he gradually became irrelevant. I'm a little grateful for it, because his incompetence may have been one of the reasons the angry section leaders actually accepted my leadership.

Late one evening toward the end of Band Camp, all of the seniors gathered in an empty hallway in our dorm. We joked about Uncle Underarms and his little friend, who had strangely, but most appreciatively, vanished. My senior class was much different than the seniors from the year before. While the last class was a large, accomplished group, we were much smaller and far less musically gifted. The advantage of a small class, though, was that we were all very close. We were basically 15 immature boys, and Amanda was the one girl who somehow was able to get what she wanted out of us. It was strange...she seemed to possess, some sort of feature, perhaps, that always drew our attention. Anyway, after a while, the conversation drifted toward Greg, and Virgile, and what had happened at the beginning of the summer. Richie, the baritone section leader, turned to me and asked, "Yeah, Paul. So, why did you rat out Virgile?"

Suddenly, the scowling returned. It seemed that they all wanted answers. With all of them together, it was my opportunity to clear up the truth once and for all. When I described the series of unfortunate events that led to my ostricization, then explained that it wasn't me who sold Virgile out, and that it was all a colossal misunderstanding, they believed me. "Yeah, I didn't think you would ever do something like that," Richie added at the end. It was a huge relief. Like going to the bathroom after Thanksgiving dinner. Or like...finishing a nonstop 48-hour hike up a steep mountain, and finally going to the bathroom for the first time in two days. Or like... spending a really, really long time explaining to your friends why you're not a narc, and then going to the bathroom.

A few days later, I had one of my biggest setbacks of the year. After band camp, the whole band travels back home to perform everything we've learned so far for our parents. After working nonstop for two weeks, I was severely exhausted at this point. All I had to do was conduct one show, and then I could go home and sleep for two or three days. However, when we arrived at the football field, there were no yard lines. Marching on a field WITH lines is hard enough as it is. A performance without lines....well....let's just say I contemplated changing the show theme to "The Village Idiots' Convention: Presented by the La Canada School for the Blind."

I worked up and down the field, using whatever I could find as yard markers. When it was time to perform, I climbed the podium as the band members marched onto the field. Several chunks of the band were at least 5 yards off from their correct spots. Everyone looked confused. My makeshift show theme was sounding more and more attractive.

I readied myself to conduct the show. A few seconds after I began, I realized that I started the piece at least 20 beats per minute too slow. I tried to speed it up, but only a few people were looking up at me, while others were frantically searching the unlabeled field for their spots. Soon, there were two tempos going. Then even more. I looked to my left, and Professor Perspiration was waving his arms trying to get some poor freshman clarinet player to move over, his stained shirt billowing like a giant yellow surrender flag. Maybe our "Seven Seas" theme was actually appropriate here. I could see him sweating profusely from where I stood conducting, like a ship taking on water. We miraculously managed to finish the show. Mike Freed's shirt was now repulsively transparent. Apparently, our ship had sunk.

Afterwards, I walked down from the podium, probably ready to vomit at any moment. Mrs. Hamre intercepted me on the way to the nearest garbage can. She was trying to make me feel better: "Wow, Paul. You really lost it. But, believe me, I've seen much worse at these things." I didn't feel better. I felt demoralized. Some of the seniors came up to me and tried to cheer me up. After some time, we were all joking about the countless mistakes we had all made during the show. Man, we had a lot of work to do. Good thing November was over two months away.



And, Fast Forward!!! By November, our group of seniors had clicked amazingly well. No, we weren't perfect, but we managed to accomplish a lot while having fun, a feat that last year's class was unable to complete. We had our second to last competition at the Hart Rampage Tournament in early November. We even won 1st Place in our division!!! Out of One! Regardless of that fact, our show had improved significantly since the disaster after band camp. Now, we had one more competition left. I would be the last regular competition of my high school career. If we scored high enough, though, we would qualify for Championships.

Since we had finished learning all the moves in the show, we were essentially just cleaning things and making tweaks to boost our music and general effect scores. During the week of our last competition, Mrs. Hamre was called in for jury duty and placed on a case. She knew that there was a lot of accomplish, and she couldn't trust a substitute teacher to teach marching band adequately, so she asked me to take over the classes. The problem was that there were two periods of band, and I was only in one of them. For the other class, I was supposed to be in AP Physics. It was probably a mistake on my part, but I ended up missing physics one day to go teach marching band. I didn't think Mrs. Waters really cared, because she seemed sadly aware of the fact that she was a horrible physics teacher. I could never understand what she was saying through her thick Scottish twang anyway.

So, I went to teach marching band. I took advantage of this time to work on some musical issues that had been bothering me, and add some stylistic elements to the show. We actually got a lot done, and it would certainly help boost our scores at the final competition.

It didn't take long before I was called into the Attendance Office for "ditching class." I was probably unjustifiably frustrated by this, because I was clearly guilty, but I couldn't help but resent the fact that I was being reprimanded for missing one class to go TEACH another class, while my friends were cutting school to go to the beach, or go out to eat, or simply to take a nap. I needed Mrs. Waters' signature to clear my name, and I explained to her my situation. She gave me her usual sarcastic look and said, "Wull now Paul, yeh shunt be dun thiz so' ouf Bit 'snut guh fo' yo' recor un' Bit an' yo' sho' know thiz Bit fo' th'exam bit in may an' yo' prolly gun' geh oul tho' attendance hoffice folk righ' up mental wud me an' ah dun need tha' Bit righ' now."

See, her lips were moving, but everything just sounded like "Bit Bit BIT BIT BIT." I just sort of stood confused, and then innocently handed her the paper, hoping that she had agreed to sign it at some point during her incoherent babbling. Then she leered at me and said something like, "Was thiz bit? Ah bit the bit bit bit bit." I had no idea if she was even speaking English at this point, and then reached out further with my attendance office slip. She snatched it, angrily piercing me with her eyes, sighed, and spoke to me with a punishing tone, "You should come to class, Paul." Yeah, I understood that last bit.


By the day of the last competition, I felt very confident. Our show was much better, and everyone was really eager to perform. As we loaded the buses, I could feel the excitement from the students around me. And in just a few hours, they would be able to show that audience just how hard they had worked since the last competition.

Then the rain came...pounding against the bus windows on our way to Moorpark College. I began to worry. I had heard about competitions being rained out in the past, and then subsequently moved indoors for a standstill performance. According to the rules, scores given at rained-out competitions could not be used to qualify for Championships. We would be out of the running by default.

After we pulled into the parking lot at Moorpark College, I dashed over to one of the other buses to ask Mrs. Hamre what was going on. She told me exactly what I couldn't bear to hear. The competition was rained out. We would play a standstill performance in the basketball arena. Our Championship dreams were effectively quashed.

Before I could walk back to the other buses to inform my fellow band members of the sad news, the seniors walked out into the rain to ask me what was going on. I explained our situation, and they responded with disappointed and despondent looks.

"So all our work over the past two weeks was a waste?," one of them asked. I just shrugged. Finally, one of the section leaders spoke up and said, "Well, nothing we can do now. This is our last competition. Let's make it fun." Then they all started hooting and shouting and jumping around me saying, "WE LOVE YOU PAUL" like a drunken mob. I felt an arm bash into my left elbow, but I didn't care. I started laughing, and maniacally so, after one of them started tickling me. My friends knew I was exceptionally ticklish, and they all joined in. I laughed uncontrollably until I fell to the ground, clutching my elbow and practically having an asthma attack. Ha...I could barely breathe. It hurt so good.

The evanescent cheer ended when I returned to each bus to tell the marching band members the unfortunate news. Some were confused, but most just looked on, disappointed. They begrudgingly grabbed their instruments, and walked into a nearby practice hall. Since there was no need to go over much of the marching or visual effects, we had a lot of down time. There was a chance for the seniors to speak to everyone and share their thoughts, but I'll touch on this later. After some time, we picked up our instruments, and marched toward the basketball arena.

During the march to the gym, everything began to hit me. I had pictured how this day would turn out for a while now. I envisioned us performing the best show of my four years, blowing the audience away, beating our rivals to take the first place trophy during the awards ceremony, celebrating as a band after the joyous result, and then heading home satisfied with the season and with a ticket punched to Championships. I figured that had to be the natural result of four years of hard work, dedication, obstacles, and frustration. All of the anxiety and sleepless nights caused by Greg had to be for something. We earned the glory. How could I expect anything less?

As I walked up the basketball arena risers to take my place as conductor, I thought longingly of the ideal end - that grand finale that I had wanted for so long. I didn't know how I was supposed to feel, now that my dream and reality were officially and irreconcilably different. I raised my arms and began conducting my last show. I may have even teared up slightly during our rendition of "I Have a Love," our beautiful ballad. After the final note, I bowed for the judges, the audience, and my 160 peers on the gym floor. I stepped down and led the way as they followed me one last time off our stage, out from under the glow of the flourescent lights, and into the rainy November night.