Ways You Know You've Been In Marching Band Too Long
Things To Do With Bad Reeds
Ways To Piss Off Your Drum Major
Top 10 Ways You Know You've Been In Marching Band Too Long
10. You roll step & keep in step with other people in the halls. (Not to mention get frustrated when they're not in step with each other)
9. You go through withdrawl when you have freetime & don't know what to do with yourself. (Or: You spend your free time memorizing jock jams & cheers from the cheerleaders)
8. You line your front yard to practice marching or sneak into the school football field.
7. You know everyone else's part. (Including your own)
6. You keep requesting your marching songs on the radio's top ten countdown.
5. You sleep with a metronome under your pillow.
4. You wear your drill masters to school.
3. Your instrument gets more attention than the rest of your studies and friends.
2. Your band takes control of the football games & gets threatened to be kicked out.
1. After marching season is over, you keep showing up for practices until your band director has to lock the band room to get you to go away.
Top 10 Things To Do With Bad Reeds
10. Light them on fire. Watch them burn.
9. Break them into thousands of little pieces. Count them. (Especially effective as a stress releaser)
8. Smash them into the wall. (Especially effective after a really lousy performance where it really was the reed's fault)
7. Collect them.
6. Build a fence with them.
5. Wall-paper your room.
4. Use them to make a koo-koo clock. (I heard a really sad story about when a guy's wife took his new hand selected reeds and did this)
3. Use them as paint mixers.
2. Put them back in the box and try to return them.
1. Put them back in the box and sell them to middle-school clarinetists at double retail value. (they'll never know the difference)
Top 10 Ways To Piss Off Your Drum Major
10. Listen intently to her/his instructions. Do exactly the opposite. Insist that that was what s/he said to begin with.
9. Empty spit exactly in the spot where s/he steps down from the podium. Get the entire brass section to do this. Often.
8. Harass the cheerleaders. Blame the comments on the drum major.
7. Invent your own tempo. Stick to your guns, no matter how big her/his beats are or how much s/he glares at you, then...
6. "Confess" to your band director that you just can't follow such bad conducting and obscured beats.
5. Drop vital instrument parts during drill (this includes bells, foot joints, slides, etc.).
4. Wait until s/he's just finished an hour of basics reviewing. "Forget" to step off on your left foot. Repeatedly.
3. Whenever you see her/him trying to find her/his tempo, immediately start singing, playing, or tapping your foot loudly and out of tempo. Annoyingly infectious songs or songs in a completely different meter are especially effective.
2. Wait until the busses have left before looking surprised and announcing loudly, "No one told us to take our uniforms off the bus, too!" or "You mean they aren't coming back to unload the instruments?!" NOTE: the above are best performed by at least three people for maximum chaos.
1. In your sweetest and most respectful voice, ask her/him, "As God, why can't you make our team win a game?" Look serious. Expect an answer. Wait for one.