Reflective Essay: The Headaches Of A Jazz Band

It wasn’t a typical Friday until I got my morning headache courtesy of the freshman drumline banging out a rough cadence three months and counting after marching season and I stepped in a puddle of spit. And my new black converses just made contact with the remnants of the trombones’ spit valves. The brown tiled floor of the band room was disgusting, especially near the low brass section where the instrumentalists felt the need to pour their spit out everywhere. I lucked out with having my instrument stored in the cages behind the low brass section’s saliva ocean. Today, I did my best to ignore the snare drum freshman that was currently slamming his drumsticks like a frenzied chimp because any form of attention seemed to encourage the idiots to play even louder; if that was possible. And right now, I didn’t have a headache and I really didn’t need one.
The folder was empty except for a small excerpt of sheet music from Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4”. The piece that determined which instrumentalists made it into the top jazz band and who got put into the ‘you tried’ jazz band. After today, I wanted to fill this folder with the Jazz One selections that Mr.Brown specifically picked out for his most talented musicians. Not that his ‘talented musicians’ are any good outside the band room considering the overall quality of the high school band. Though there were a few exceptions of talented students that had started playing before middle school or got private lessons. I was in neither of those