My Bus Ride with Ben-Jammin’.

It’s difficult to explain why I’m in the band, or why anybody is in the band, to anyone who has never been in the band.  Thinking about what it must look like from an oustider’s perspective, I can’t imagine how the things we do could possibly be enjoyable, or how we can be lured in and come back year after year. 

It’s mostly a lot of work, and socialising.  We practice for an hour and a half three afternoons a week, marching parade style to the practice field, up a steep hill, where we go over the drill for our field show over and over, going set-to-set, adjust, go back and do it again, adjust, do it again…. and then march back down the hill to the band room.  Rain or shine.

And then every saturday we perform on the field for the half-time show.  We have to drag ourselves out of bed early in the morning, get to the band room, and put on our impossibly uncomfortable uniforms.  At LHU, that’s a pair of over-alls, a polo shirt, a suit jacket, and an overlay with a cape and a million buttons and straps.  And then the hat with the plume, the black socks, and the dinkles, and the white gloves which really don’t keep your hands warm at all.  Oh, and your instrument, in my case a trombone, and your music for the stand-tunes.  Once we’re all dressed we march parade style all the way up to the field, and Lock Haven is an extremely mountainous college.

For away games, we still have to put on our uniforms, but this time, on a bus, a co-ed bus.  And if you forgot something, you just have to improvise, because we’re probably on the other side of the state until you remember it.  We eat sack lunches and frequently hear the words “I’m changing, and if you don’t want to see it, don’t look.”  Because really, nobody cares what body-parts are exposed on the band bus.  In the end it’s all for the sake of uniformity.

The field show is a whole other story.  I guess that’s the funnest part, the six minute show.  It’s just kind of cool to perform for everyone, you know, you’re actually down there on the field playing your instrument and marching in formations.  Sometimes I feel bad for the people watching if I think they’re trying to figure out what picture we’re making with our formations; there is no picture, we just make cool looking designs.

For the rest of the game, we’re just sitting there in the stands, usually freezing, and hardly playing our stand tunes at all.  I guess there’s this relatively new rule that we’re not allowed to play when the ball is in play, so that means we can only do stand tunes during a time out or between quarters.  So when we do play, our drum major is conducting us, but looking away at the score board so she knows when she has to cut us off so we don’t get in trouble.  That means sometimes we start a song, play a couple measure, and then we’re cut off.

But here’s the thing.  Most of us have been doing this kind of thing for five+ years.  To us, it feels kind of like home.  All of our good memories from high school and college so far are not sitting in the classroom, or the cafeteria or our dorm room, but they’re going to the games and being with our friends and performing, and the commeradery on the bus rides and at rest-stops. 

We’re in positions with the other band members that we’re never in with any of our other friends.  We’re in rare form when we’re together, and that puts us in a unique position to bond with each other.  When you’re in band, your section becomes your brothers and sisters, and the other sections become your cousins.  Ask any band alum, and I’ve asked many: the best  friends someone in band will ever make are other band members.  and in my case there are over fifty to choose from. 

When you’re frustrated, weather it’s with trying to memorise the music or with another band member or your uniform just doesn’t fit, there’s always someone else to share your frustration with you.  And you know, some people just don’t have a lot of friends, because they don’t have good social skills or whatever it is.  But when they’re in band, everyone’s put together, and that means that so many people get the chance to know you, and you get to know them, and you start to see each other in a different light.

At least in the LHU band, we all hang out with each other.  Yeah, that means even the ones we don’t like, and thats because we’ve gone through these strange and unique situations together.  It’s like we’re siblings, and siblings don’t stop being siblings when they don’t like each other. 

For example.  There’s a kid in my section that I never liked.  Ben-Jammin’.  He was always happy.  Or he always acted happy anyway, you know, smiling, telling jokes, blah blah blah.  And I just never knew how to get along with him.  He would say things to me like he was trying to be funny, but you know, we just don’t think the same things are funny.  And I always felt awkward.  And actually, I didn’t want to say this, but Ben-Jammin’ was wierd, and I just didn’t like him. 

And if we were different people, we’d be at each others throats.  But because we’re both tromboners and we sit beside each other and march beside each other, we manage to get along.  Like, at times when I want to say something snotty, I just don’t.  And at times when he wants to do something that would annoy me, he does it to someone else instead. 

When we went to the away game at Slippery Rock University, he ended up having to sit beside me on the bus too, which I wouldn’t have chosen, but actually I really didn’t mind it. I felt good about having learned to be civil to him, and I welcomed the oppurtunity to learn more.  It was pretty awkward, I mean, of coarse he’s nice and everything; he was putting his stuff in the overheard compartment and he asked me if I wanted to put anything in there, and I gave him some stuff to stick there.   When he sat down, he was like, “We’re going to Slippery Cock!” instead of rock, see.  And it was a stoopid thing to say so I just ignored it, but then he thought I didn’t hear it so he said it again, and I had to be like, “I heard you the first time, but I was ignoring it,” in a sarcastic voice.  He just laughed.

Now this next part you’re just going to have to trust me on.  There’s no one more homophobic then homosexuals.  or at least this one; nothing makes me more uncomfortable than physical contact (when we’re warming up for rehearsals, we do a massage circle with everybody in it, and if I’m not sandwitched between two girls, I sit out.  Oh, and I always use stalls, not urinals).   I know, if a strait guy is homophobic, and uncomfortable around gay guys, it’s probably not my fault and I don’t have to punish myself becase of it.  But it’s not my job to cure him either.  If I can do something simple to avoid making somebody else feel uncomfortable, then fine.  I’ll do it.  But Ben-Jammin isn’t homophobic or anything, I mean, he didn’t have a problem sitting next to me and he’s never shown signs of being unconfortable around me at all.

So anyway, he falls asleep, and his head keeps falling on my shoulder.  So with one finger to the side of his head, I just push the thing off.  but he’s all spread out, like, his legs and everything, so I’m like curled up in a ball against the window just to avoid his touch.  I had my legs up on the seat, and in his sleep his arm fell on my leg like it’s an arm rest.  I pushed it off so fast that he woke up, “sorry!” he says.  Me, maintaining my dead-pan, “that’s alright.”

And you know, I don’t know.  I just think he’s alright now.  Like, on the way back we switched and he took the window seat, and then when we got home I left my dinkles in the overhead accidentally, and just when I was about to get back on the bus to get them, he came out with them in his hand. 

See because even though we’re polar opposites, we’re ok.  We’ve been around each other so long, and under such bazarre circumstances, that we learned to zig when the other one zags.  Despite our differences, we’re even willing to help each other out.  And the same kinds of things happen with other band members too, and last year it happened with another person in my section.  I mean, his name is Benjamin, but I’ve always called him Ben-Jammin,’ and I don’t know why.   Very few other organisations- short of the military or ROTC- can give you that kind of experience, and in the end, we don’t just put up with each other and the annoying things we have to do.  We enjoy it- all of it.

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