Why Band Kids are Special

This was a draft that never made it to post back in May when I wrote it - I think it's worth a read.

Pt. I - Hell Freezes Over

So... I'm teaching my band to march.  Yeah, really.  After years of resisting the pressure from pushy athletic parents and a particularly troublesome principal, I went there.  Willingly.  It's nothing big, just a little local parade that will last all of 15 minutes. Still, it's a pretty big step for me.  Actually, it isn't the first time - we did the parade two years ago, and it was pretty fun.  Part of that decision came from the realization that doing marching band doesn't necessarily mean getting caught up in the crazy world of competitive field shows.  A parade here, a pep rally there... We can probably make that work, have a little fun and not kill ourselves in the process. But that isn't really what I wanted to blog about.

Pt. II - Band Kids: The Late Bloomers

In the process of preparing for the parade, I asked a marching-proficient friend of mine (Bill) to come in and help us get a simple set of  marching commands down.  He said something to the group, in response to some mocking sounds we heard coming from behind a fence that separated our band from the PE class that was in session on one of the school's tennis courts... something that kind of got me thinking about the band nerd existence.

When we heard the PE kids start to tease the band, Bill stopped the band in place and gave a little speech about why band people are special:

"What you do is special.  Less than 10% of the people out there do what you do.  That makes it special.  The people who poke fun at you are jealous because they can't do what you do... remember that."

It's a tempting to believe the bit about jealousy, but I disagree.  When other kids make fun of band kids, it isn't because they are jealous- it's because they genuinely believe that a kid who voluntarily picks up a clarinet is as deserving of ridicule as a kid who looks or dresses differently.  By definition, they are an outcast - and no image-conscious kid would dare be associated with something that would jeopardize their social standing.  Telling the kids anything else is rationalizing, and the kids know it.

At the same time, band kids are special.  Maybe not the kind of 'special' that Ambercrombie and Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries has in mind... but being willing to forsake general popularity in favor of participating in something that you love makes you special.  It takes a certain amount of courage to do that.  True, some people might argue that nerds gravitate towards band because they have nowhere else to go, but let me tell you something about my nerdy band friends - none of them ever feigned affection, stabbed me in the back, stopped talking to me for petty reasons, or decided whether or not to invite me to the party based on  how my image was holding up that week.  That tends to happen in the popular circles.  (I could go on about how the value of having the ideal AF image is an invented one, but in the interest of shaving down the post to a reasonable read, I'll forgo that for now.)

But the thing that makes band kids *really* special is the fact that they tend to develop qualities that help make them awesome adults.  True, you don't have to be a band kid per-se, but the absence of an image-conscious social structure allows them to build a community of cooperation , trust and acceptance.  The other thing is that the very activity that draws them together is far more impressive if and when they carry it into their adult lives.  To be sure.... I am WAY more popular now than I was in high school... and for the right reasons.

It's hard to make that promise when you're working with teenagers, though - they can barely see their lives past graduation.   Still, I must be doing something right to keep as many kids going in the program as I do.  And frankly, I don;t have to wait until they are older to see the payoff - I think they are awesome now.