Our local high school prairie band, the Pride of Piedmont, traveled twenty arduous miles to participate in the State marching competition. After a morning of practice, they endured the prelims to pass gracefully into the finals last night.
As a Band Mom in the Works, I had to attend and take my budding percussionist Bubs with me, of course. I mean, it was a must: to sample the future, to taste the air, to sense the incoming.
And to buy probably the world’s worst popcorn — twice! — but that’s an aside.
Twelve bands from around the state earned their way into the finals, which began an hour early, as weather was forecast to ruin all evening plans. Things needed to move quickly in order to duck for cover before impending high winds and tornadic conditions disbanded — see what I did there? — us early. (It was a hot day; cold fronts and hot air don’t blend well, causing Disruption, Madness, Entropy, the Big Three.)
As an Okie, I was ready: I brought a raincoat. That was nearly Scout-like behavior for me, the ultimate non-forward thinker. I was ridiculously proud of bringing a coat, shunning it quickly beneath the bleachers without another thought. My inner storm-sense felt no whisper of anything but excitement and snare drum vibrations.
Our band didn’t play until 8pm, while clouds rolled in, iPhones everywhere tuned to weather radars, and breezes blew a tiny bit more forcefully than minutes before. Weather aside — because hey, weather and Okies are an ageless duo, married lo these many years (it does its thing, we ignore it) — tension was palpable. Even Bubs had abandoned his twelfth request to get up and leave and do whatever pre-teens deem fun aside from sitting still with their moms.
(Let me take a moment to feel my maternal gene quietly cry and shrivel.)
When finally the Pride marched afield, happy Piedmontian feet stomped repeatedly across aluminum bleachers, drowning out any thunder that dared approach. Our anxious crowd sounded like a herd of buffalo trampling grasses, leaving deep, deep footprints, and video-graphing every step, because buffalo do that, as they, too, care about posterity as much as any glowing Band Mom alive.
And the band did us proud. They were lovely in their blue and black with silver striping, recreating the Black Plague, the death, the mayhem. Our stricken teens ended up prostrate across the yard lines, valiantly playing the parts of corpses as Doctor Death beneath his crow mask wandered between castaway instruments and polyester clad bodies to fully appreciate his reign of doom.
It was epic.
And Bubs loved it, too.
So. Snapshot of the future, right there.
And the rain, though it dropped teaspoons of rain upon us during the tabulating and subsequent award ceremony, held back until much later. It knew our wrath should it fall prematurely.
And instruments are expensive, so thank you, buffalo of yore, for your input into holding back the storms until all the tubas were packed and the bells rolled away.
The future is bright.
(Though I’m not certain my poor raincoat, resentfully discarded hastily beneath my seat, made it back to the house…)
