What's the point of Band, anyway?

To get good opportunities, for one...

Well, as I sit here trying to do homework about the scientific method, I was brainstorming what to tell you about band. And then the answer slid into my email inbox. 

Last night we had pep band at our home football game. The pep band plays encouragement songs for the team and the spectators. We have lots of fun. We scream and yell when our team scores and we talk and eat food and play louder than ever and when the game's finally done it's around 10 p.m. We all go home tired. I'm always glad that the home games are on Friday so we can sleep in the next day! But they're a lot of fun, these home games. We dance and eat and cheer and play fun music and grow closer as a band. I guess that's kind of weird, but sorry. A band must be close (and have music skills) to perform well because they must understand each other, and so they must be close. But I'm not saying that I know all the secrets of our high brass section. If I knew all of that I'd be disturbingly smart.
Anyways, my friend Danielle is in band with me. Several of our other friends are in it, too. Danielle is a cool person. She provides the comic relief when things aren't going great and cheers louder than most and is an all-around great band member. And yesterday she caught a cold, so she couldn't come to pep band. It was sad. Now, you might ask, what does this have to do with pep band? 

It has to do with the very meaning of school band itself. Read this:

I miss when the tubas would destroy small civilizations and the drums would hammer away and we would all dance.

Because that's what Pep Band is about.

Being a family...

AND BLOWING THE OPPOSING TEAM OFF THE BLEACHERS.

--Danielle, on the subject of pep band (check out her band-centered blog here.)

Pay attention to that second-to-last line. It's so important. That's the meaning of high school band, in the end. Not only are you learning how to make noise, you build memories so that when you think of high school, you don't remember how hard Chemistry and A.P. Calculus were. You remember how you and your friends looked forward to marching practice after school in the fall, and the marching field shows at homecoming, and how you used to dance to the music and cheer so loudly at pep band (and get your ears blasted out by the piccolos), and how you spent your summer marching at high noon in the summer heat, and the summer band camps and how you would come back on the first day of school and play your instrument better than everyone else because you practiced for hours a day over the summer. 

So, yeah. That's why I do band. Also I do it because it's fun. 

(Meaning: you should be in band, too!!!)