By Donald Lee
The rain fell hard. Plastering our rain-soaked parkas, 40 members of a marching band stood, a monument to a football team that was out there, fighting in a struggle of school powers. Two school powers, Secaucus and Rutherford. It was a day unlike any other.
It was 6:30 p.m., in the band room. People shuffled their stuff aside here and there, changing into uniforms in the storeroom or just coming in from a day that slowly began to weave into night. I had just finished putting on the uniform, the slightly cumbersome thing it was, noting that the blue sash on my white uniform was on properly. It was another day of football playing, and we were playing for homecoming… the homecoming of another school, that is.
It was already an unusual day. We were only a band. A simple band, made of about 63 or so members. We were a melange of high school and middle school, and only two-thirds strong due to a school dance. When you are missing even one grade, it hurts the band. Missing two cripples it. There was comfort that at least Matt, my talented drummer buddy, was staying.
And everything was set, but something was wrong. There were things in the bus, people in the bus, what was missing?
…And then I ran, ran to a bus that I realized I was-
-yes, I!
-was late for, reaching it only to find that we were also minus one drum major.
MINUS one drum major?!? The idea that we were missing the most important member of a marching band throbbed through my head worriedly. If I did not already go to the bathroom, I would have felt the stress of fluids swelling up with this problem.
We caught sight of her, finally, bringing relief to most of us. I felt a wash of relief as the bus door closed, and the trip began. Morale ran high, though some of us already felt a bit of worry over a band that was only two pieces of a three-part set.
The bus stopped. We came, pressed for time. Out with the equipment. Quickly, quickly, drums out, Sousaphone out. Anything that needed to be removed, the drum section quickly removed, and as all that went out, we had to go out there. 'Why?' I wondered, mind wandering through scenario after possible scenario as band parents carted our tools towards the field.
The unexpected had happened… we were to start playing.
Now.
In what could be called an instant, my first experience of a pre-game show was one huge ball of chaos. Thoughts jumbled, haywired, and criss-crossed in a chaotic cluster of confusion as we tried to unpack and play with only two arms and a beat of quarter notes that dripped like a leaky faucet in defiance.
But before I knew it, we were done and I had a mess of field instruments.
Homecoming? We were supposed to play first if it was a team's homecoming?! This fact only worried me more with my lack of knowledge on this.
Grumbling with complaints of disappointment, the equipment was removed to the bleachers. The bleachers with that light, those dulled beacons of antidark pressing into the football field, the field that soon filled up with our team. The Secaucus High School Patriots.
The football team of Secaucus, as any Secaucus local could tell you, has been known for having great football teams. That is, great ones that become noticeable from time to time.
The very force that made people into drum majors and drum majors into college students was what turned a football team in its prime into a team that was lacking. Previous experience watching our team in action was full of shame. Loss after loss after loss, the only exception I found to that pattern was a simple tie during one game that still led to another loss.
I stood there, watching the first half, and then a band that played its homecoming music. Fate shaped it even weirder with a tingle on my cheek.
Rain.
In tiny drizzles it came, and then heavier through the third quarter. Soon, drums were covered in fear of warping, and we dressed in parkas that we brought with us from the band room. The darkness combined with the light and the rain. My hair became a rain-soaked mop that looked towards a team that still lacked a legacy.
But, then, we were winning. We… were… winning…!
As much as it was a surprise to me, we were actually winning! A team that was at the bottom of what it once was, finally struggling up! And of all places, at someone else’s homecoming! The rain kept coming down, but no matter, for the marching band always kept themselves alive.
And it rained, and it kept running close, as a victory became a tie, into a fourth quarter that had us standing there, soaked and grasping our tools, ready to play a song into victory, or simply pack our tools away in defeat. I felt cold, wet, even hungry, but the grip I held on the rough-skinned wood block in my hand was as tight as the flesh on my bones.
And in the end, a lone receiver ran into the touchdown zone. The familiar tune of "Notre Dame" echoed through the field. Someone had won. We had.
After that, it was I day I came home with a smile on my face. A simple smile, but a smile nonetheless. It was the smile that you have, knowing that, yes, your day was bad; yes, you made mistakes; and, yes, you can never be perfect. But seeing your work, while you took serious effort for it only to have it go as unaccording to plan, the world will still turn, and fate will still be undetermined for us no matter how horribly our best-laid plans were.
Donald Lee, a member of the SHSMB drumline, graduated in 1998.