Back in 2006, I was a member of the University of Louisville Marching Band. We would have on-field pregame and halftime performances before every home football game, plus a couple of road games, each season. Before the pregame performaces, we would warm up and rehearse about 2 1/2 hours before kickoff, then go play a few tunes for the tailgaters, play for the University President and guests, and make another stop or 2 along the way. It made for some long but fun days. For example: a game that had a 7:30 kickoff would begin for us with a 4:45 rehearsal; with about a 3 to 3 1/2 hour game, we wouldn’t get back to our cars and campus until 11:30, give or take. After a pretty late, long game, I was in the band parking lot with 3 other friends when one asked me what time it was. Me, running on auto-pilot at this point, looked at my watch and the numbers, and said “noon.” It was midnight. I wish I had a decent defense for why I said noon (other than exhaustion lol). All 4 of us still get a laugh or 2 at that, whenever the time is asked for around at least 2 of us.
In 2013, I was in Minneapolis for a rehearsal with the Minnesota Brass, an all-new Drum and Bugle Corps based in nearby St. Paul. I had gotten on to one of the public buses with my Euphonium case… a not-at-all small case. A guy standing up front, next to me, looks at the case for a couple of seconds, then asks: “how long did it take you to cut the elephant head off and put it in that thing?” The bus driver answered for me: “He’s smuggling kids on here, not heads! That’s why the case has wheels!”
There wasn’t a lot of fall-down, floor-rolling hilarity in those stories. However, I hope you not only got a chuckle or 2 out of them, you also had your mind taken away from the huge amounts of nonsense and bad juju that have surfaced in the last few weeks. Sometimes, you have to turn off or tune out the negativity for a few moments and do something or think about something more positive, like reading, going outside, grabbing a few friends and having a get-together, or remembering good times from the past. Get the good vibes and good juju flowing again.
The Nexus 