Poor little guy.

[Aragarthiel]

My old band teacher, who was like a second mom to me, has a one-year-old who has had an ear infection pretty constantly for the last couple of months. He's going to get tubes put in next week, so hopefully that'll resolve things, but I can tell from her Facebook posts that it's difficult for the whole family. Prayers/good thoughts are welcomed.

On a side note, does anyone else have good band stories? If there are enough, it might be worth a separate thread. I could tell you guys about the time half our class got sent to the office because one kid asked the substitute, "How was your day?"

[Luna Baby]

For the past 2 years, I've been a chaperone for our high school's marching band. My youngest DS marches. I can tell you from riding the bus with band kids...there are always stories! 4+ hours each way can lead to lots of interesting music and songs. Interesting bus drivers, too.

As for your friend, I wish her child well soon. It's never easy when our little ones are sick.

[Aragarthiel]

The band teacher I mentioned actually ended up marrying our marching band bus driver. We were coming home from an away game and one of the other students yells out, "Is that an engagement ring?" We'd known they'd been dating, but didn't think they were going to get married. And now they have a little guy.

[XCashier]

My old band teacher, who was like a second mom to me, has a one-year-old who has had an ear infection pretty constantly for the last couple of months. He's going to get tubes put in next week, so hopefully that'll resolve things, but I can tell from her Facebook posts that it's difficult for the whole family.

Undoubtedly. Ear infections are very painful for little ones, and they don't understand what's happening; all they know is they're in pain and it's not stopping. I hope the tubes will help and make him feel much better.

[fireheart]

This was from the pit band I was part of in year 11. Our school did Oliver! albeit heavily modified as a number of kids could not sing AND act at the same time (they tended to slide more into one or the other with a small handful of exceptions). Some of the highlights from that included:

-Having to repeat "Consider yourself" over and over during an afternoon rehearsal because the stage crew couldn't get it right (they'd been practicing with a piano and/or a tape recording and not the band). It eventually got to the point where the conductor said "Fuck it" and sent us off leaving only the drummer (to keep the beat) and the other music teacher playing piano. It got to the point where we had the TV in the next room on as LOUD as it could go just to drown it out and we STILL couldn't drown it out. (This was at a "performance" camp where we had a TV in the other room in between rehearsals.)

-What we did learn was that our school principal was apparently an opera singer! The first time he let loose with "WHO WILL BUY" (he was the knife grinder-we were lacking in suitable male roles since our resident male opera singer had said "fuck no" to actually being in the play as he was an egomaniac), I almost nearly dropped my flute-it was THAT spine-chilling. (Who Will Buy was one of my favourite songs along with "My Name" because I got to really show off there )

-A student teacher (who was specialising in drama) got roped in to play the role of the Beadle. His "wife?" One of the students. So many of us were trying our darndest not to crack jokes around the implications had they not been in character. (I believe we also had to modify a good chunk of "I Shall Scream" for this reason)

-This was more just a moment, but we were doing "Food Glorious Food" and I had not seen it done with full costume. It was very nicely done, except that during one of my dead moments (where I had like 18 bars rest), I took a peek up on the stage. What do I see? 3 of the dancers from my year (all ballet) dancing around in rainbow costumes en pointe, spreading out rainbow tablecloths onto the tables. W.T.F. It's a workhouse!

-One of my classmates was roped in to play 2 of the smaller roles (the undertaker's apprentice and Dr. Grimwig) and had to do massive costume changes for both. One of the stage crew would help him with his hair to speed up the process. The first time I saw him in full kit, hair and all, I burst out laughing. Why? he looked like Dracula sans fangs. It turned out that the stage crewgirl who had done his hair simply grabbed a huge chunk of gel from the tub and slicked his hair right back. It got even funnier when he was maintaining this for the final scene...while dressed in his undertaker garb from the earlier scene

-One thing that kinda stuck with me as well was that our uniform for the pit crew was white shirt, black pants, black shoes and...a bow tie. on the first day I had to wear this, I joked that we looked like penguins. The name stuck, so for the entire show, we were nicknamed "The Penguins." Our pit? The penguin cage We got told off however for climbing up the rails of the pit and onto the stage from there though. >.> (This pit was set up so that nearly half of the audience could see us)

ETA: My Year 10 music class also combined with the dance and drama classes to put on this really cheesy production since we were celebrating 25 years of the school being open. The play? Back to the 80's. A few of the girls were in multiple classes (ie dance/drama, dance/music, music/drama) so they were given the proviso that they could choose one or the other. If they still wanted to appear on stage, they'd be placed in smaller roles (this was also assessed-I believe the way they handled it was that the girls doubling up in drama were given small roles that didn't have a lot of stage time and the lone music/dance girl participated in the routines during class time, but not on stage. We also had to use tapes for some of the songs which made things easier. The music folks were assessed separately as we had to do solos as well as participate in the ensemble). Some of the highlights from THAT:

-Our drummer had apparently had a late night one night, because when we came in and started setting up for the performance we were going to give the touring new students, all of us start hearing this faint snoring noise. We turn and there's our drummer, having a good old snooze on the drumkit. Our music teacher also found this HILARIOUS. We were tempted to bang on the drum to wake him up, but settled for shaking him.

-I discovered that a number of my classmates CANNOT sing, but the number that really took the cake was "500 miles." This was one we WERE playing. Basically, in the story, two guys are lusting over this girl and start singing the song as a way of winning her over. The two of them were kind of friends and just started REALLY hamming it up on stage. All of us were trying our darndest not to start laughing and I squeaked a few times

-THIS one I DID burst out laughing on at the end of one of our rehearsals. Basically, when they were rehearsing, the male students did not have their mullet wigs so they had to use this girly pink "babydoll" esque wig as their "mullet" wig for practice. That alone was giggle worthy, but the guys got their wigs before the big night. All except for the narrator. This was justified as he was meant to be the "older" version of the main character (a la Wonder Years) but he also had to sing the opening number. So what does he do? Stays in his costume (a suit), puts on the girly wig and starts dancing around singing "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" badly (he was in tune more or less, but wasn't "singing" as well as he could've been). Luckily we were blacked out by then!

-Not a band related drama, but one of my other classmates had the main role and there's a scene with him and his 2 friends playing around with fake lightsabers (context: set in the 80's. These guys were basically the "nice guys" in the story, compared to the Jerk Jock and Extra-Nerdy roles) and one of the guys goes a bit too hard with the lightsaber, resulting in it breaking on stage. To his credit, he managed to flub it very nicely.

-On our last day, we were clearing down after the performance and I was quite tired, as were half the class. So I got the OK from my mum to get the rest of the day off and lucky me got the day off

[Sapphire Silk]

I was in band, but I don't have any great band stories. Our band director was a dick.

But I was in choir, and I have some great choir stories.

Red pencil

When I was a junior, I joined choir on the urging of a friend and found it to be a tightly knit group of people. It was a great two years, and I lettered as a result. My first year, I joined in working on our annual float for Homecoming. We were supposed to meet at the director's house to do the construction, but she wasn't there, so we left her a note before leaving.

She corrected it for grammar and spelling. I still have the note.

I'd rather go shopping

Every Spring, we gave a Pop Music concert. We did a big performance for the general public, and two performances (morning and afternoon) for the school during school hours.

Students aren't supposed to leave campus for lunch, but a bunch of us decided we were going to McDonalds anyway during 4th Period (which was when students rotated through the lunch periods). One of my choir mates asked our director and the theater director if they wanted to come with us.

Mrs. Crowley, ever the dignified respectable lady that she was, failed to hear the question. The theater director said, "No thanks, I'd rather go shopping."

The waterworks

The rehearsal room for the choir had an exit that went back stage of the school's theater. There was also a supply room between the choir's room and the band room where mostly musical instruments were stored. One day one of the male members was chasing one of the girls around with a water pistol. They ran in circles through the supply room, back stage via the band room, and back into our room from backstage. Much laughter and egging on was ensuing when Mrs. Crowley walked back into the room from the main hall. Hearing the commotion, she went to the back stage exit just as the students were circling back into the choir room. The boy blasted Mrs. Crowley full in the face with the water pistol before he realized what he was doing.

She didn't say a word. She just extended her open hand, palm up. The boy hung his head and handed the water pistol to her quietly while the rest of the class laughed our collective butts off.

[Aragarthiel]

Little guy got the tubes in his ears today, and he's already feeling so much better.

[RootedPhoenix]

Yay! Hope he keeps getting better.

[XCashier]

Little guy got the tubes in his ears today, and he's already feeling so much better.

That's good.