Marching Band: day 1

yesterday, Thursday, August 13th, was the first day of marching band for the Bainbridge Island High School. well, it was actually the training for the incoming freshman. the section leaders were there too, helping us train. Mr. Waterkotte is coaching the marching band, and he is strict. he's wearing us down into a pulp. my whole body is aching especially my neck, shoulders, upper arms, thighs, lower back, and yes, my abs. well i dont really have abs, but where my abs would be if i had any, it hurts pretty bad. he had us do pushups, all sorts of stretches (which werent that bad because i have 8 years of ballet backing me up. im flexible), and then he had us lay down on our backs, and lift our feet up an inch of the ground-it was torture. this excersise isnt new to me, but its not like i do it every day. after about thirty straight seconds of lifting one inch, he had us lift three feet, and thirty seconds later we'd go back to one inch, and repeat the process. it worked our leg muscles and our tummy muscles. then we spent two-and-a-half hours learning a series of commands: "Band, parade rest!" was the first one we learned. "Band, atten-hut!" was the second. then we got our instruments out and learned 'instruments up'. i tell you, whipping a trombone from straight up and down in front of you, to at your mouth and ready to play in a fraction of a second, is not the easiest task. we're talking about a pretty big instrument here. its tall, so it wobbles a lot, making it rather difficult to hold it still when going from unstruments up to attention position. we then learned how to march. this was somewhat difficult. "keep your legs straight! bend your knees a little more! i said keep your legs straight! not that straight! feet forward not out! dont smile! how dare you smile!" it was pissing everyone off, but it was funny. well sort of. in attention position, waterkotte told us this: "you know how a rattle snake waits? tail rattling, coiled up, ready to strike. are you ready to strike?! you are a rattle snake. in this position people should fear you. people should say 'oh my God they're scary!' and run away in fear. you are going to be the scariest marching band ever. do not smile. keep your eyes intent and focused-right over the head of the person in front of you. your eyes should be burning holes in the back of their head-they should feel it!" i thought he worded all of this very nicely. today we are learning several more commands, and we're going to learn how to march backwards. i dont know how we're gonna do it-it was hard enough trying to walk forwards and hit the mark each time! eight steps, twenty two inches appart, one 15-yard line to the next. i did it perfect at first but then i kept getting worse and overshooting it. oh well. i just hope we can make through today without keeling over dead.