High school

When I was a senior in high school I was on the color guard (flag corps) in the band. Actually, I was in it all four years. But senior year our football team was incredibly wonderful, and the games kept going on and on. Even though we were doing the same show at every game, we still had to practice for about an hour and a half on Monday through Wednesday and then from 7-9 on Thursday. The games were at 8 (I think…the old memory is going fast!) on Fridays.
As the season went longer, my friends and I became bored from doing the same thing over and over, both at the games AND the competitions. So we started making it interesting by switching places and trying to do the routines from a totally opposite position. Then we moved on to putting our flags on upside down, wearing bright colored sweats under our skirts so there would be black skirt, black boots, and then yellow knees. At one of the games I sewed a big red heart on my flag. We knew we were gonna get in trouble, but do you think that stopped us?
At the last game I marched in, a friend (I’ll call her Katie Cowart) and I decided at a certain part of the show where all of the attention was on the percussion section at the front of the field that we would put down our flags, run up to the drum major’s podium and climb on, and then do a little ‘salute’ that we had made up the week before. Unfortunately for us, we added another move at the end that nearly got both of us expelled…we turned around with our backs to the crowd, bent over, and pulled up our skirts so you could see that the two of us had on gold satin bloomers with ruffles. The crowd seemed to enjoy it and we jumped down and finished the show with the rest of the band.
And then Monday came. Somehow we had not thought that 1. Anyone would know it was us,
2. It would be perceived as ‘mooning’ the crowd, since it looked like we were showing our panties (our skirts were knee-length), and
3. Anyone would be offended
Boy were we wrong. I don’t remember how we got away with just a stern scolding, but somehow we did. I think it was our fast thinking and, of course, our charm.
“Katie” and I still talk every once in a while. She told me last year that when she thinks of the 10 most embarrassing things she’s ever been a part of, I was with her 9 of those times. I suppose it’s good to be remembered for SOMETHING!
As it turned out, we won that game and our next one would be against Marist, a rich snooty school. Since I just KNEW we would beat them, just like we had beat every other team that came against us, I skipped the Marist game to go to Bennigan’s at Northlake Mall to celebrate Jerry’s 18th birthday with him, since he was my sweetie. I remember after dinner we were driving to our favorite place to ‘park’ and the results of the game were announced on the radio. We had lost. Jerry and I were shocked, because that meant I had just missed my last chance ever to march at a football game. Even though I loved him more than life itself, I couldn’t help being upset about missing the game.
So, kiddies, don’t do what I did, thinking you’ve always got a ‘next time’. You never know when your time here is up so you better make sure you use your time wisely. Do all the things you dream about. Don’t wait till later because you might not have ‘later’. Try to enjoy every moment.