Personal Narrative: Band For Me

Band for me was and is everything, at least I thought. My senior year in band I learned that band was just more than music. It is a place where you could find your second family, and I did that exactly. However I did not find that out the easy way, our band started to lose confidence as well as responsibility. All of the directors, and section leaders started to take notice of this. We could not exactly put our finger on why it was happening.

Sadly one of the other section leaders believed they knew the reason why the band started to slack off. He simply accused my section and my leadership skills to discipline a section. Yes I was aware my section was filled with some people who were not so enthusiastic about being in band, but this

was not my first time being a leader for a section. So I simply ignored his accusation about my section and went on with our rehearsals. The other section leader Alex did not so much approve on how I ignored him, and felt the need to come in during our practice time to take one of our players and talk to him. Now we were in the theory room which is not really sound proof, so we had everything that Alex had said to Kaden. When Alex brought Kaden back in, we all stared at him with disbelief on what he said.

Alex simply had the nerve to accuse us once again for the behavior of the band.

But not only that he called us cancer, and said we were spreading like a wildfire. But Alex failed to notice that his section was no where near perfect, and instead of practicing they were all roaming the halls. Now that week was definitely going to be interesting not only because of what we have been accused of but also because that was the week of squad comp. Squad comp is where we have a preview on how far along we have come on our marching show, and after we have a competition between the sections. Now the shows that we perform by sections are shows created by the leader of the section. Along with the show we make our own props and shirts that we would use and wear for when we perform our show. Now I did not exactly have time to make 9 shirts within 4 days. So I planned a horn social where we could make our shirts and watch The Lego Movie; which by the way was the theme of our show. Now as I was looking at my shirt design I felt as if there was something missing. It took me about half the night to think of what it was, but when I realized it hit me like a bag of potatoes. What would section shirts be without an inside joke? On our sleeve we nicely painted a cancer ribbon for everyone to see, as horrible as that sounds we fully supported cancer and we did not take it as a joke. But we felt the need to show that there was other things to have compared us to rather than something that kills

people everyday.

I strongly believe that we needed that social, I did not really know my section that well.I made nicknames for them that night, and we were no longer just the horns we were the Bell family.

That night was something you could call a little abnormal we made a giant dog pile, hid eachothers things,stuffed our faces with food, torchured my friends cat by holding her, and also started building relationships with each other. I have never laughed so much in my life, and I am pretty positive that everyone’s stomach was hurting after that night. After that night it gave every one of us that push that we needed to know we could rely on one another to be there for each other. As I was lying in bed I started to think how people like them could be cancerous. There was no way of it, sure they are not really people persons but does not mean that they can make others

misbehave.

The next day I decided to talk to my director, and the other section leaders that the accusation Alex had made was not true. But was the entire leadership's fault for not setting good examples on how to be motivated. Now my director sadly had favorites within the band and I could tell you for fact that nobody in my section including me was a favorite of his. But still knowing that fact I was going to make an effort and protect my section. I lost that argument, but it seemed to work for the best. It just gave us a better reason on why we need to rely on each other.
I never gave my section detentions or laps, and I definitely made sure that if any one else did that they had to come to me and have an actual purpose for it. Again others questioned my leadership abilities, but failed to realize that they did as asked and got things done. We simply did it the horn way or as we would now say it the Bell way. As the marching season went on the bonds between us got stronger. We would pile our uniform bags and hat boxes in my trunk and went out to Steak’n Shake after every game. Some would even say we were inseparable we talked twenty four seven, and still do might I add. We still sometimes look back to that day we got called cancerous and make fun of it. Nobody really understood why I stood up to protect the horns or why I stayed friends with them. But that is alright, we knew we made our own family for when our actual family was not there to talk to. We were shoulders to cry on when we thought we were going to fail a class. The advice giver for those pesky relationships. Over all they knew and I knew that we were eachothers second family. Never did i think that i would gain a second family through band. But it happened, and it was fun hanging out with those crazy hooligans. A part of our Bell family has been broken, two of us graduated high school recently. But I will always consider the horns as my second family, and one of my best families.