Time-lapsed Blogography Day: Twenty-Five Years Ago Today

Twenty-five years ago today, on October 28, 1995, I was a 16-year-old high school senior with a day full of musical events.

I woke up at 5:30 AM for breakfast and activated a classic landline telephone tree to marching band section leaders around 6:20. Once the whole band had been awakened (parents HATE morning telephone trees), everyone arrived at TC around 7 AM for an early morning practice. Unfortunately, it had recently stormed and the field was a muddy mess. From there, we boarded buses to North Stafford for a band competition.

Because of an accident on I-95, it took us quite a while to get there (I-95 has not improved in the intervening time). We passed time by holding up papers with messages on them for the other buses. We also stared at a woman in the car behind the bus until she got so unnerved that she pulled over to a state trooper near the accident.

The competition itself was a joke. The field there was muddy as well, so every high school band marched in an asphalt parking lot that had no yardlines painted on it. I did a pretty slick drum major salute, but our halftime show was forgettable -- even with lines we rarely made straight lines, so their absence was keenly felt.

We got back to TC around 1, in time for a repeat of our halftime show at the TC-Robinson game (won, 9-7).

In the evening, I worked for the Alexandria Symphony, setting up and tearing down for their evening concert with my compatriots. The job was barely worth the money, but I did get $20 extra for each concert series just for calling people up and recruiting them to move chairs, again on my trusty landline.