It took me a whole year to save up my babysitting money. And then, the wait. Did I make the team after try outs? YES! And so it began. My first attempt into a school club. I was so excited! Lassiter High School Color Guard, HERE I COME!
First of all, I was very good at the tricks. I could twirl and flip that flag like no body's business! I could even learn the dance moves. I loved the band scene. I was having a great time, up until....
It was time to learn how to get into formations. I had to memorize where to stand through out the course of our half time shows. Not happening. It took me almost seven years to learn how to spell my maiden name. Are you kidding me? Memorize where to stand on a field, twirl and flip a flag, and keep up with everyone else, and be in the right spot? Nay, nay I say. I expressed my concerns, early on. Everyone said, "You will get it! We practice every day, and then, we go away to band camp and we do it so much you will be doing it in your sleep!" Yes, for real, and no, "this one time, at band camp" didn't happen for me. So, I had saved up an entire year of babysitting to pay for this color guard, which was over a thousand dollars from start to finish. Start to finish lasted from the spring when I learned I made it, to the third football of the season. Let me go back...
So, I was a cluster from day one. The Lassiter marching band is a very well know band. The awards are countless, and the school is huge. Therefore, the band is enormous, and well groomed. I, however, stuck out like a sore thumb. I would flip that flag into all sorts of tricks, but never standing remotely near where I was supposed to be. So, it didn't take long for the band director, a well known and respected man, to learn my name. And standing way up high on the platform that was like 30 ft. above our practice area, he would bellow through his microphone, "TANNENBAUM!" (It didn't take him half as long to say or spell my last name as it took me.) Yep. I was sorta' jazzed that out of maybe a 1000 person band, he knew my name. I felt a little special. (Put the word special in quotes, and that is more like it.) So, after all that, I knew it was time to drop out, and find a new scene. I found the theater, and that was home, until I graduated a half of a year early, and moved up to NY in April of 1995.
Congratulations, Mr. Watkins. For not resigning while I was screwing up your marching bands. You deserve that award. And one for not losing more than just your patience with me for those few short months I wasted my money on. It's not your fault that I have two braincells and that they fight each other.
CCSD CobbCast » Alfred Watkins of Lassiter High School Named ‘America’s Most Admired Band Director’ cobbcast.cobbk12.orgLassiter High School Band Director Alfred Watkins was recently presented with America’s Most Admired Band Director Award for 2012. Watkins received more than 850 votes from his fellow band directors and received what is dubbed the “People’s Choice” of band directing awards.
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