The cool bus
Another benefit of the recent move: we spent a glorious evening a while ago having dinner at a garden cafe and listening to the sounds of a friend's jazz band. Wonderful. For several reasons. a) the food was nice, b) the weather was lovely, c) the music was terrific, and d) it was like a very strange, very small, very band-centric high school reunion.
I had attended HS with two of the ensemble's members. One, I've kept up with consistently (seeing at various parties over breaks during college, and occasional holiday party when I was visiting my parents, plus periodic emails. He came to my wedding and gave me a random yet fabulous gift.) And one I haven't seen since I was in college. But both are great folks who were influential in my youth. So I expected it would be nice to see them again.
What I didn't expect was running into their "groupies," which are several OTHER people I went to school with. Particularly, the "cool kids."
K'wait: when I was a sophomore (3 year high school system back then), the week before school started, we had band camp. This was a week of 12-hour rehearsal days. We met everyone. We learned tons of new stuff. We were in awe. And we were especially in awe of those big huge seniors who knew what they were doing, and were quite relaxed and groovy about the whole thing.
Two of the big wigs were the trumpet soloists for the field show. I mean, they're seniors, they're cool, AND they're the best musicians! That combined with the drum major, and it was the "in crowd" (in a nobody-but-K-lyn-and-Corndog-will-understand kind of way). When we went on band trips, the major goal was getting on the "cool bus," defined by whatever bus these guys were on. If you were on the cool bus, you were privy to all the best jokes, stories, and music for the entire trip. If you were on a lesser bus, it sucked to be you.
So there I was at the garden cafe, thirty-something years old, and back on the cool bus. It felt weird. It felt nice.
I had attended HS with two of the ensemble's members. One, I've kept up with consistently (seeing at various parties over breaks during college, and occasional holiday party when I was visiting my parents, plus periodic emails. He came to my wedding and gave me a random yet fabulous gift.) And one I haven't seen since I was in college. But both are great folks who were influential in my youth. So I expected it would be nice to see them again.
What I didn't expect was running into their "groupies," which are several OTHER people I went to school with. Particularly, the "cool kids."
K'wait: when I was a sophomore (3 year high school system back then), the week before school started, we had band camp. This was a week of 12-hour rehearsal days. We met everyone. We learned tons of new stuff. We were in awe. And we were especially in awe of those big huge seniors who knew what they were doing, and were quite relaxed and groovy about the whole thing.
Two of the big wigs were the trumpet soloists for the field show. I mean, they're seniors, they're cool, AND they're the best musicians! That combined with the drum major, and it was the "in crowd" (in a nobody-but-K-lyn-and-Corndog-will-understand kind of way). When we went on band trips, the major goal was getting on the "cool bus," defined by whatever bus these guys were on. If you were on the cool bus, you were privy to all the best jokes, stories, and music for the entire trip. If you were on a lesser bus, it sucked to be you.
So there I was at the garden cafe, thirty-something years old, and back on the cool bus. It felt weird. It felt nice.
posted by Courtney at 2:56 PM
6 Comments:
Meanwhile, I always ended up in a hotel room with Eric Peterson. Why was that? *shudder*
honey, if we could have had you in the girls' room with N and T and me, we would have!
I can't remember if I got on the Cool Bus my sophomore year... I sat in the back and was surrounded by most of the drumline, so I think it might have been next in line behind the Cool Bus in that regard (what is the equation... 5 drummers = one drum major? Is that right? I can't retain high school math for this long!)
So I'm dying to know their actual names now... who's jazz band was it? (I ask because Dan was involved with a couple bands from ex-"cool bus" people from high school) You probably can't blog their names, but can you e-mail me?
OK, OK, I wasn't one of the "cool kids," rub it in ;).
I think you've slighted Drum-Major-the-Latter, however, by not including him somehow or other in this coolness. He was, in a completely non-Hawaiian-shirt way, very cool too, of course ;).
DMtL said (when I asked) that the confluence of all those HS people was completely random; normally noone they know from HS shows up ... go figure! Cool evening :).
DMtR is undoubtedly the coolest of the cool kids. However, he wasn't on my radar back then, when I had "senior awe."
Jade: the two trumpeters were right before your time. The two members of the jazz ensemble were both drum majors, one a year ahead of me, one my year. First guy: clarinet player, wacky sense of humor, wicked tie collection. Second guy: played tuba and tenor sax, Asian, won the band service award his senior year, was in the Cockney Quartet for MFL.
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