Friday Night Lights
Reflecting on Marching Band, James Bond, and The Things We See More Clearly in the Fall
Our high school marching band would play the halftime show no matter what the weather was. Ohio’s falls meant that there were plenty of crisp fall nights where you could smell the fullness of concession stand popcorn, freshly mowed football turf, and Abercrombie & Fitch body spray lathered upon teenagers piled together in the stands trying not to be left out.
And then there were other nights that were just plain ol’ fashion cold. One particularly rough night had us marching in sleet. Not quite cold enough for pure snow, not nearly warm enough for a refreshing rain. Just the ugly middle, which means you are marching on a football field that is not unlike an ice cream cake fifteen minutes removed from the freezer. Mushy on the top. Absolutely unforgiving underneath.
And march we did upon that gladiatorial cake. Proudly we let our James Bond-themed halftime show play forth.
The trumpet and trombone sections raced forward in perfect horizontal procession as we let the James Bond Theme song rip at a triple forte. For a few glorious moments, Bond-inspired pride lifted our feet from the mud, our imaginations from the fact that we were acne-laden teenagers with Binaca tucked in our band uniform pockets, and we soared heroically.
Until Dennis Catrow caught his left toe in mud cake.
Or maybe he tripped himself.
Or maybe it was our moving at such a rapid pace and playing such an inspired moment of the show coupled with the clapping parents and so it was not his body but his soul that could no longer stand to remain upright before such glory.
Who knows.
One way or another Dennis and his trombone fell straight to the ground. And this was not an agile crumple. This was not one knee out of balance and then the other leg trying to compensate and there is then a slow fall with an accompanying attempt to remain upright. No.
This was one moment perfectly straight up and down with trombone playing to the skies. Next moment, Dennis has face-planted into the top layer of the cake, trombone under his body (Note: for those suddenly worried, this was not a medical thing. Really, it was the mud. Or a momentary lack of coordination. Or the soul thing I mentioned).
My eyes got huge behind my trumpet, and the first chair trumpet who was marching two down from me immediately read my anxiety.
He took his lips off of his mouthpiece and began calling out, “Keep marching! Keep marching!”
This ran directly against every “be a good neighbor” life lesson I had learned to date, but also, once the herd mentality takes over, my goodness is it difficult to break away.
Dennis wobbled by himself on the sticky top layer while the long, horizontal row of trumpets and trombones heeded the call of the first chair. More than heeded. It was like our bodies found an extra gear of inspired non-compassion compassion.
We need to compensate for Dennis! We need to bring it home even more!
And our frozen lips found a quadruple forte filled with a level of soul-energy I am quite certain even Bond’s finest moments could not inspire.
(A fine Bond moment. One that does not compare to the inspired high known by 70 teenagers one sleet-filled, fall Friday 25 years ago in Southwest Ohio.)
Dennis caught up, eventually.
Somehow he, his muddied uniform, de-lidded Binaca, and grass-caked trombone found the formation again, and we finished as a team. He took some good-natured ribbing (pun mildly intended), and he was also the kind of guy who could laugh at himself.
—
It’s a strange thing about our memories.
We live our days spending hours and weeks and months and years doing a ‘thing’ - band, school, sports, drama, work, parenting, trips, meals and more. And as the years progress the memories fade. We remember only in the broadest of brushstrokes. A moment here or there. Maybe a name and a face.
Except.
Except for the times when there was a fall.
A break.
Things did not go the way they were supposed to.
It may have been hilarious or heartbreaking or both, but the bottom line is this: always it is the trips, falls, and breaks of life where time slows down in a way that our memory can see far more clearly.
It’s as if the disorientation heightens our heart’s awareness to what is before us, and we take in the moment far more attentively. Intuitively, we know that the fall is offering our soul far more than if everything kept going just as planned.
Indeed. Here we teenagers thought that if we really want to be ‘in,’ we needed the right body spray and right mouth spray accompanied by some well-chosen, logo-laden clothes. And then Dennis Catrow fell and recovered, we belly-laughed the night away together, and we discovered in his moment of human-ness that what we all really needed was to stop pretending.
Not a myriad of sprays, but vulnerability.
Not Bond-esque adventures of success, but tripping.
Not hiddenness under logo-layers, but falling fully exposed.
These were the bridge to the human connection for which we so longed. Who knew such a gift was so close the whole time? It took a fall for us to see more clearly. A fall for the memory to settle more truly.
What about you? Any embarrassing trips, falls, or failures? Any devastating ones?
Perhaps we are mid-way through one right this moment.
And surely it is embarrassing or terrifying or both when lying exposed in the mud-caked moment. But I do we believe we have at least one reason we can take heart. Because the heart is in over-drive right now, slowing our soul before this moment and filling us with something sacred we could never have received otherwise.
This one of your stories I HAD to share on FB because it brought back so many memories of marching band at LeRoy High School and also because the point I needed to hear and embrace over and over. How wonderful to open a space to accept all parts of our lives...even the slips and falls.
I remember that sleeted night, but had no idea about the fall… classic saxophone, the horn’s always in the way, can’t see anything!