Obese, undisciplined, video-game-playing slackers!!

Last Thursday was a crazy one indeed, but the things that stand out from it warrant a post, I do believe.

My day began in Orlando, FL. It was my third day on the new job and I sat in a meeting in the hotel meeting room for four hours. (the hotel, the cab, a restaurant and the airport are all I saw of Orlando) Then I raced to the airport and managed to catch an earlier flight than we’d originally scheduled. Then I sat in my truck for an hour. Then I ran into the intermediate school’s auditorium to catch my oldest daughter’s last band and choir concert of the year. This was an added bonus because my original flight from Orlando wasn’t due home until 8 and the concert started at 6:30. However, soon after I settled into my auditorium seat I realized I’d been stuffed into seats like that for most of the day and I wondered if rushing into this one was really a good idea. A decade of school bell schedules punctuating my life has taken its toll on my ability to sit captive for more than about 54 minutes at a time without a break. I was never a “sitter” to begin with, but programmed conditioning over that long could alter a Zen master’s ability to sit.

Anyhoo, the principal at my daughter’s school always manages to say something crazy (and something very heartfelt that shows how much she loves her job and her students) as she introduces these things and she didn’t disappoint. So the concert started without a hitch. I was prepared for another fumbling assortment of easy pieces that only parents could love based on our previous experiences. In that I was disappointed. I was absolutely blown away by these 177 fifth graders who had given up their lunch recesses all year to put on this fourth and final show. Their performance was perhaps the most astonishing display of progress that I’ve ever witnessed in anything my offspring have ever undertaken.

Instead of the fumbling, bumbling preteen awkwardness that makes non-parents run away from such events, these kids laid out four songs so well you might have guessed they were the honors band members culled from the entire county’s schools. It was truly incredible.

The fifth grade choir was just as good, but they always are. They finished their portion of the show with a song written specifically for them by the choir director’s boyfriend. She and the boyfriend wrote it together for the school’s 100th birthday celebration last month. It made the principal cry the first time they performed. It did it again Thursday night.

The school’s auditorium, which was the high school’s auditorium when my parents attended (and the junior high auditorium when I attended) is too small for this year’s fifth and sixth graders and their parents and grandparents, so the concerts are now scheduled so the fifth graders go first, then leave, then the sixth graders do their bit. In between, the crazy principal wiped away tears as she reminded the audience of this arrangement.

We met D1 (oldest daughter) in the band room once the fifth grade half was finished. I’m starting to dig this part of the routine because it reminds of watching college performances – both school sanctioned drama and non-school sanctioned bands in bars – in which friends were performing and then hanging out with them in the “green room” after the show. This is definitely a matter of perspective, because my initial feelings about these post-fifth-grade-show meetings were more along the lines of: oh great, fight the crowd, find the kid, then get the hell out of here. But now it feels more like those privileged invites of the past.

So anyway, we meet D1 in the green room (band room storage area) and she begs us to stay for the sixth grade show cuz she wants to see the jazz band’s performance. Now, I love jazz, but sixth grade jazz??? AFTER the day I’d already had?? Ahh what the heck. So we stayed.

And everything that I said about the fifth grade band goes double for the sixth grade band. It was their last performance in this school before they head up to the new junior high school. They nailed it. And it wasn’t even the band we’d stayed to see. By that point I had given up on the jazz band being able to live up to the expectations that their warm up acts had created, but they were only playing four songs, so even though I was kind of tired of the seating arrangement by now, I still figured it would be tolerable, and I was still, I thought, optimistic that it might even be fun to watch.

They were freaking incredible. These kids weren’t just plodding through four numbers they’d rehearsed over and over in order to get this requirement over with; they PLAYED! It didn’t hurt that the songs were all familiar movie tunes or that they included a version of Louie Louie that featured something like 12 different solos – yeah, solos, improvised jazz solos played by shy little sixth graders just learning their way into adolescence! I was absolutely blown away. When the principal came on stage after the show, asked for an encore (they played Louie Louie again with the solos!) and then started crying while saying how much she’d miss these kids when they left for good at the end of the year, I joined her. I know... I’m a complete sap caught up in the situation, but I couldn’t help it.

Anyone who collectively writes off today’s kids as obese, undisciplined, video-game-playing slackers has been hanging around with the wrong crowds. Those folks need to skip a golf game or bar trivia contest and attend a school function or two. Likewise, anyone who condemns public schools (not that they don’t deserve some criticism) should add a little variety to their routines as well – especially before they offer up an automatic “no” vote on the next school funding initiative. I know an event like last Thursday’s doesn’t always come off as well as this particular one did. Sometimes, they truly do take on a face that only a parent or grandparent could love, but if you don’t check them out, you’re missing out on something very special. The scratchy home videos of it will never recapture what we witnessed that night. But the real point is, if you missed out on this, then you missed out on something that these kids, the band directors, the choir coaches, the teachers, the parents, the principals and everyone else who helped make it happen have done and done extremely well.

But hey, this ‘blog is all about me! The fact that I caught this concert by chance is further proof to me that my new job was meant to be. Granted, I’ve only been there for 4 days, but so far the future’s so bright...

Luth,
Out