Ambrosia Software Web Board: Marching band nostalgia - Ambrosia Software Web Board

I remember from a previous thread that there are a lot of people here who were/are in marching band in high school. This is my first year in marching band, so I've only been to one band camp, but there are some good highlights:

(Keep in mind that I go to an all-guys private high school. We went to band camp at Ohio University.)

• During a game of capture-the-flag with the whole band (70+ guys) playing, a guy ran into a tree and someone called an ambulence. He ended up getting stiches.
  
• Several cheerleading groups were in the same dorm building as us. We duct-taped a guy to a chair and put him in the elevator with a cheerleader going to the top floor. He turned up again about half an hour later. We don't know where the chair ended up.
  
• Some guys in the room next to us came in and were shining a laserpointer out at people on the street. About 15 minutes later, a group of guys who we didn't know came up to our room, flexing their muscles and acting tough, asking if we'd been shining a laserpointer on the street. I said that it was the people across the hall, and locked the door.
  
• Someone blew up a magnum condom on top of his head and walked around. Then it popped. If you're 15 years old, this is the funniest thing you've ever seen.
  
• We went to the sixth floor and got all three elevators stuck there, so the little lights outside the elevators that display what floor the elevators are on said 666.
  
• Every year the seniors give awards to everyone else. Some examples: "George of the Jungle Look Out For That Tree Award" (given to the guy who ran into a tree), best last name (given to a guy with the last name Dohme), and "Gay Jungle Fever Award" (don't ask). I know there were funnier ones, but I can't remember any of them.

Also, for a game in Cleveland (4ish hour drive) we stayed overnight in a hotel the day before the game. We'd literally only been in our room for 5 minutes when the band director knocked on our door and asked us what the hell we were doing.

I have a lot of fond memories of band trips. Awesome times all around. Except for the one time when temperatures were in the negatives and no one had gloves... hehehe.

Band trips rule. Some highlights:

High school, junior year. Disneyland. Brought our instruments, and never played them.

Camp, all years. Octopus tag. One word: Dirt. Lots. Of Dirt.

College, last year: Fiesta Bowl. Probably the best college football game EVAR. A great end to an otherwise crappy college semester.

Nostalgia doesn't really work when you're the only one who was there. But yeah, I've had some band-related fun too.

And I'm surprised that no one has quoted American Pie yet. Let's see how long that lasts.

I was in orchestra, not band, but we still went off to camp every year as a class thing in high school. I really only have one decent story though. In my typical fashion, it's long and involved.

Every year, our teacher would bring in some big hotshot conductor to lead us in our post orchestra camp concert. Really, that's what the camp was for: allowing us to get to know our special guest conductor and work with him for a few days. One year (I can't remember if it was junior or senior year), me and a couple other guys were put up in a hotel room on the second floor of the motel where we were staying (camp was at some sort of Baptist retreat north of Santa Fe (the Thunderbird Inn? at the Glorieta Conference Center, in case anyone cares). After we checked in, I noted that we were located directly above the room where our special guest conductor was staying and didn't think much about it.

Well, we finished our first day and we retired to our room at around 10 PM. We had something like an hour before lights had to be out and bed checks were to be conducted. Shortly thereafter one of my roommates took off to his girlfriend's room and her roommates (one of whom was my remaining roommate's GF) ended up getting kicked out and came to our room. Well, they decided that, since they weren't their beds, they would start jumping up and down on our beds with vigor for about fifteen minutes, and me and my remaining roommate weren't about to complain about two lovely young things bouncing around above us. They thought this was great fun and finished off the evening by attacking my roommate, ruffling his hair and wrestling with him, stuff like that. By and by, the girls took off all sweaty and disheveled, my roommate's gf kissing him goodbye at the door. We began to switch into our sleeping clothes when we heard a knock on our door. Figuring that it was merely the bed check, my roommate answered the door and found the guest conductor standing there...

Rewind a few minutes and go to the guest conductor's room. He was sitting in there, minding his own business (or something), and suddenly began to hear dueling bedsprings up overhead. He didn't think much of it, figuring that what goes on between consenting adults is their own damn business. He continues polishing his shoes or whatever and then, suddenly, it dawns on him that he's not dealing with consenting adults here, he's dealing with students and it's possible that they're on his watch! He throws on his shoes and charges out to the parking lot and looks up at the door, out of which two lovely young ladies exit, looking sweaty and disheveled, the latter of which turns around and kisses the sweaty and disheveled looking young man at the door before walking away giggling. "Mother######er," he thinks, "how the hell am I going to explain this to their teacher?!?!" He charges up the stairs, knocks on the door, which is answered by some kid who's looking sweaty and disheveled who's wearing nothing but his boxers with some bearded ###### standing in the background without any pants on...

"Alright guys, I'm no prude or anything, but you should probably try not to make it so obvious next time. Fun is fun, but keep it down so that the entire neighborhood doesn't hear and everyone can stay out of trouble. That okay?"

"Uh, sure. Whatever you say, man."

"Good. See you tomorrow."

"Um, okay. See 'ya later sir."

<door closes>

"What the ###### was that all about?"

"######in' nutjob. He didn't even check to see if <first roommate> was in the room. Let's hit the sack."

Fastforward to the next morning, my room is eating breakfast with the other room containing the aforementioned lovely young ladies. The guest conductor shuffles by our table and gives all of us the biggest s###-eating grin I've ever seen. It isn't until this exact moment that I put together what he said the previous night with the fact that he was staying right underneath us and the state that he had seen both us and the females leaving our room in. I choked on my coffee and laughed my ass off for the rest of the day.

Thus concludes my orchestra camp story.

-Pufer

Why are all of Pufer's stories always better than anyone else's? For serious....

He makes them that way.

I haven't been on band trips, but I have been on ski trips, with prorbably less upervision. The coaches really don't care what you do as long as its not illegal and you show up to the hill on time.
Lets see here...

I've had people break into the bathroom while I've been showering 4 or 5 times (once they took a video of me showering, the other time it was pictures, both have been lost, once they started poking me with a ski pole through the curtain), I've gotten into numerous wrestling matches, one organized boxing match, a few fights, caused whoknowshowmuch hotel damage, amongst other things I can't recall off the top of my head.

The first time someone broke into the bathroom while I was showering, it was because they didn't realize I was in the shower and needed to use the toilet. He broke the door down by shouldering it, then left.

The next time, they picked the lock, threw open the door, and threw a shoe at the shower curtain to make it move over so they could videotape me (it was unsuccessful, they didn't see my nads). The shoe was moderately wet, but I got it out quickly. When they showed they video to my coach, he promptly erased it.
Also on that trip, there was a rumour that one of the girls liked one of the guys, so we set a trap. Someone hid the videocamera, while recording, in the room somewhere. The guy who was the target of the rumour put on every shirt we could find, then the other guys hid in the bathroom. The guy sat on the bed, called the girl on the phone to come over. When she did, he immediately jumped out of bed and began ripping off his shirts. To our dismay, the girl left.

On another trip, a guy in my room picked the bathroom lock and took a picture of me while I was in the shower, then ran. I have no idea what hapenned to the pic.

A bunch of them once tried to duct tape me to a luggage cart, and failed.

Hmm, thats all I can think of now.

Oh yes, while waiting for a flight, we played pictionary. I am absolutely atrocious at drawing, and thus was asked to draw the most. The game quickly detriorated (or is it upteriorated) into the dirtiest things anyone could think of to draw, but this isn't #ev3, so I won't discuss this here.

This post has been edited by LNSU: 24 November 2007 - 03:25 PM

Pufer for president!

I made out with a chick on the bus back from a competition. That was pretty much the only cool thing that ever happened to me in marching band.

I've never been in a marching band, but I have been in a Pep Band. Basically, we followed our football team to games and played some awesome songs during the games. Let me think of some stories.

One time, we started a "###### the Prep" chant (the Prep being our rivals).

During my junior year, I seldom played with the band. I'd walk in with them, carrying my trumpet (so I'd get in for free). I'd then put my trumpet up in the Pep Band section and go hang out with the girls I knew. Pep Band is actually considered a class for us. A graded class, which is usually an automatic A. That year, I got a B, which, in turn, actually hurt my GPA. Amazing. That was also the last year I was in the Pep Band.

That's all I can think of for now.

This post has been edited by Destroyer E: 29 November 2007 - 11:10 AM

Octopus tag, San Francisco, Disneyland, and chocolate bombs. Oh yeah...

Band Forever!

Well, our school's football team won the state championship this year. It was pretty anti-climatic, actually, the state championship game was probably one of the easiest wins the whole season and was quite a boring game. The whole season itself was memorable though. So I'll probably gravedig

this marching band season, out football team lost all but 2 games at least 40 to zero. and when we went to competition, our band got best in our class, but got degraded from a 1 to a 2 becouse of a 3 second penalty.

as for marching band stories,there was the time when we got hopelessly lost on the way to a game, and tried to convince the busdriver to drive through a cornfield.

oh, and when one of the clarinet girls started throwing skittles from her bra. that was pretty memorable.

Me and a small group of friends would spend just about every bus trip playing Dungions and Dragons, where whoever was DMing would set these impossibly huge mosnsters on us, like the time we got sucked into an alternate dimension, and got out asses kicked by a demigod.

Yoda Almighty, on Dec 9 2007, 09:29 PM, said:

you're not a nerd at all.

(btw, I'm in marching band too. We rock the ######ing socks off of all the other bands in the UP.)

This post has been edited by lemonyscapegoat: 10 December 2007 - 04:21 PM

I play the oboe... Oboes don't go well with marching...