My Night Playing in the Ohio County HS Alumni Pep Band [PHOTO]

An interesting event showed up on my Facebook feed about two or three weeks ago. It was for the Ohio Co. High School "Alumni Pep Band". I will forever be a band nerd at heart at heart so I put down "interested" in the event. By last week, I changed my event status to "going". I had no idea what was going to happen but I knew it would be fun. 

I prepared by dragging out a pair of drumsticks that were up in a closet in my parents' house and I started knocking away. I couldn't find my tiny practice pad from back in the day, so I tried to find surfaces that weren't Mom's kitchen table or coffee table. Speaking of Mom, I slowly started to drive her nuts just like the old days. I stretched my wrists and arms out as best as I could. I got nervous of course, but I got in my car and took the less than 5 minute drive out to the high school.

I was a little late, but I was greeted by the current band director Lincoln Rowe and the friend who posted the event on Facebook. They knew I was coming. It was surreal walking back into the band room I lived in for four years and I came back as marching percussion instructor many years after that. I walked into the chaos of a pep band night, random tinkering, horns tuning up, and kids greeting their classmates who just graduated in May. I was one of three alumni who graduated before the last decade to show up. It seemed like every single percussion instrument was being played and hit, hard! Even though I experienced this din many times before, my ears didn't quite want to get on board, it was LOUD! Luckily, my ears didn't ring much after I was done playing.

I didn't get to practice at all before we all started loading equipment in to the gym, but that was okay, I could jump in just about anywhere, I hoped. We all agreed to rotate and I was pleased by the number of girls who were in the percussion section. I got to jump in and play the marching snare drum pictured above. The funny thing was, I never marched snare, I marched bass drum. No worries, I jumped right in on "Go Big Blue" and OC's fight song among other pop tunes including "Take on Me", "Land of a 1,000 Dances", and Katy Perry's "Dark Horse".

For someone who literally had not played in 18 years, I was proud of myself and I'm still proud to be a part of the Ohio Co. High School Band. Go Eagles!