Only a few people in the world still wear their middle school band shirt at twenty-four years old. I am one of those people. In my closet hangs a red polo shirt with a white scripted “Jeremiah” above the pocket and Salado Band spelled out in large block letters on the back. I wear it because a) it still fits, and b) it says something about me. I like to think I’m asserting my uniqueness, making myself a little more interesting. It’s a conversation piece, that I wear. But more likely my bright red shirt tells everyone, not, I am a unique and interesting person, but rather “I was, and probably still am, a huge nerd.” More accurately, a huge band nerd.
As long as I wear this shirt, I will never be cool. But I don’t care, I’m proud of my band nerd past. Kind of. I practiced my instrument every day during Middle School. I was the kid carrying the beat up trombone case to and from his mom’s car every single day. Trombone’s are relatively large instruments, and the cases are even larger. Bigger still are the large bore trombones with the F trigger. Nevertheless, I lugged that thing home and back every single day. My hard work earned me both a new nickname (“nerd”), usually repeated quitely as I walked past Adam before class, and first chair in the band. My 8th grade year, I made first chair regional band, and I played “Jupiter” with some of the best 7th and 8th grade trombonists in San Antonio. This was the pinnacle of my musical career. It’s been pretty much a steady decline since then.I still practiced in high school, but not quite so regularly, especially after I discovered that I didn’t really have all that much, well, talent. I mean, I’m not tone deaf or anything, but I realized I don’t really have whatever it takes to be a professional musician. I made regional band a couple of times, but never made it to city or state or whatever comes after that. I fluctuated between first and second chair, attended practice, but I gave up my ambition of being a professional musician.
Still, I took lessons from a very large man and very talented trombonist named Ron. Very few people have intimidated me like Ron. He could play flight of the bumblebee on the trombone (which is very difficult, by the way) and his biceps were bigger than my head. Six feet tall and with hair pulled back in a rat tail, muscular arms the size of my trombone case, and a very scary grin, he would terrify me and some of the other trombonists brave enough to take a half hour lesson from him. When he didn’t show up for rehearsals I felt a relief like you feel when you wake from the dream where you forgot to study for the test and then accidentally ran over your neighbors cat because you’ve been distracted by the cops pulling you over to arrest you for your involvement in an illegal drug cartel. It was that kind of relief.
All of this happened during concert season, which I never really enjoyed that much. Our band never had much success when it came to playing music well. Or marching. But marching band season was fun, even if you sucked. Well, not so much the actual marching. A few weeks before school started we would lug our instruments into the 98 degree heat and march around the soccer field learning how to roll our feet when we marched, and trying to decipher confusing charts so we could get someone to go to a point exactly seven and a half steps below the hash mark on the 37 yard line and form a wavy line with someone six and half steps below the hash mark on the 33 yard line. Then you had to reach that spot on with your left foot on the 2nd beat of third measure of Hoe Down while turning quickly towards the sideline. And make sure to hold your trombone up! I was not particularly good at this. But on Fridays, during the football game, I never had as much fun playing my trombone as I did when playing “Oye Como Va” as loud as I possibly could.
Rice University has a marching band called the MOB (Marching Owl Band). The MOB didn’t actually march, but instead would run from formation to formation, playing songs, while an announcer would make fun of the opposing team. These jokes have been toned down some, but the MOB has really pissed off a lot of opposing teams in the past. At one point in the 1970s, they found themselves trapped in the stadium by a group of very angry Aggies because they had made fun of their dog. Playing off of the MOB theme, the members wear pin striped suits and fedoras. Most play instruments, but a small group of the oddest individuals run around waving props, blowing on kazoos, and occasionally wearing those flesh colored naked suits. My freshman roommates was one of these.
I enjoyed the MOB for a period. The highlight was probably asking a stadium of 109 thousand university of Michigan fans to stand up for their state song, and then playing “O, Canada.” Eventually, I moved on, for lots of reasons. For one, I found that I didn’t really fit in. Imagine the goofiest people from the nerdiest college in Texas, and you have the MOB. They were fun, but just different than me. These people make lots of jokes that only math majors understand and enjoy wearing togas to football games. Not that there is anythign wrong with that, I’m just not that kind of person. Partly because I’m not smart enough to get all those math jokes, partly because I don’t work out enough to look good in a toga. So I left the MOB behind.
My trombone lives in a closet at my parents house, now. I keep thinking someday I might play again, but it’s pretty unlikely. So now I just have my middle school band shirt, to remind people, and myself, that I was once a band nerd.
Sunday
Interview: a horror story from my recent past
I left the office building after my first interview with the computer company thinking about what a relatively painless process I had been through. Rather than being subjected to the usual interview questions – “What three words best describe you?” “If you were a condiment, which condiment would you be?” – I was subjected to a series of tests. Aptitude tests consisting of strings of numbers and rows of neatly rotating squiggles and boxes; word problems demanding that I use skills honed in 10th grade and then dulled by four years of letting my friends calculate the tip; and a personality test. Afterwards, I met with a woman who described a job I was highly interested in, and I left feeling fairly confident that I would soon have a job.
I waited a few days until receiving an e-mail informing me that my personality test results were invalid, and I would have to take it again. Before the test, someone had told me, “don’t try to give the answers you think we are looking for, answer honestly.” I tried very hard to answer honestly. The job involved teaching groups of clients, and I desperately wanted them to believe that I enjoyed speaking to groups of people and meeting new clients on a regular basis. I wanted them to think that I was outgoing and friendly, and that the time I sat through dinner surrounded by people without speaking more than three words was an isolated incident. But I resisted. Instead, I answered “Not sure.” Why they have this option , I don’t know, but I was very unsure throughout the entire test. So I failed the personality test. Unfortunately, they only allow seven unsure answers, and I had about 3 times that many. But even so, many of those questions I was generally unsure about. Maybe its not that I answered dishonestly (or that I lack any distinct personality, as my girlfriend lovingly suggested, an idea that I would rather not entertain). Maybe I am genuinely an inconsistent person. I liked the idea that I, fascinating person that I am, could not be defined by their silly personality test. I am too complex for this simple device of the human resources department. I took the test again, and they pegged me. Or I passed, or something. In any case, I was called in for a second round of interviews, where I learned that I had not escaped those terrible interview questions.
I was subjected to two rounds of questioning. The first round was relatively painless, except when I overestimated the amount of money I would be making within two years (how was I supposed to know that employees do not recieve 40% raises after the first year?). The second round, however, was much less pleasant.
I like to think that I am a not a transparent person. I am a mystery to those around me who wonder what deep thoughts and dark secrets are hidden within me. Until I speak. When I start talking, which is not very often, I pretty much give myself away. During an interview, speaking is mandatory. Mr Howell, or Polendale, or something, could see right through me. He hurled questions like “Who are your business heroes” and I countered with “Donald Trump, because he has lots of money.” At one point, the room began to spin. I do not know if it was because the interview seemed to be spiraling out of control, because I had only eaten French fries and a soda that afternoon, or because I have some poorly placed nerve in my butt that causes the room to spin when I sit on it for too long. I shifted in my seat, and eventually Mr. Howell stopped circling around my head, just in time for him to suggest, “Maybe the corporate world isn’t for you. Do you think that maybe you’d be unhappy working for us?” I didn’t get that job.
I waited a few days until receiving an e-mail informing me that my personality test results were invalid, and I would have to take it again. Before the test, someone had told me, “don’t try to give the answers you think we are looking for, answer honestly.” I tried very hard to answer honestly. The job involved teaching groups of clients, and I desperately wanted them to believe that I enjoyed speaking to groups of people and meeting new clients on a regular basis. I wanted them to think that I was outgoing and friendly, and that the time I sat through dinner surrounded by people without speaking more than three words was an isolated incident. But I resisted. Instead, I answered “Not sure.” Why they have this option , I don’t know, but I was very unsure throughout the entire test. So I failed the personality test. Unfortunately, they only allow seven unsure answers, and I had about 3 times that many. But even so, many of those questions I was generally unsure about. Maybe its not that I answered dishonestly (or that I lack any distinct personality, as my girlfriend lovingly suggested, an idea that I would rather not entertain). Maybe I am genuinely an inconsistent person. I liked the idea that I, fascinating person that I am, could not be defined by their silly personality test. I am too complex for this simple device of the human resources department. I took the test again, and they pegged me. Or I passed, or something. In any case, I was called in for a second round of interviews, where I learned that I had not escaped those terrible interview questions.
I was subjected to two rounds of questioning. The first round was relatively painless, except when I overestimated the amount of money I would be making within two years (how was I supposed to know that employees do not recieve 40% raises after the first year?). The second round, however, was much less pleasant.
I like to think that I am a not a transparent person. I am a mystery to those around me who wonder what deep thoughts and dark secrets are hidden within me. Until I speak. When I start talking, which is not very often, I pretty much give myself away. During an interview, speaking is mandatory. Mr Howell, or Polendale, or something, could see right through me. He hurled questions like “Who are your business heroes” and I countered with “Donald Trump, because he has lots of money.” At one point, the room began to spin. I do not know if it was because the interview seemed to be spiraling out of control, because I had only eaten French fries and a soda that afternoon, or because I have some poorly placed nerve in my butt that causes the room to spin when I sit on it for too long. I shifted in my seat, and eventually Mr. Howell stopped circling around my head, just in time for him to suggest, “Maybe the corporate world isn’t for you. Do you think that maybe you’d be unhappy working for us?” I didn’t get that job.
Thursday
Jeans
It's about five o'clock, and I'm hanging out in a friend's dorm room waiting to go to a meeting. Now that I have an apartment off campus, I spend a lot of time in this room, between classes, before dinner, bothering my friends as they attempt to complete physics problem sets, wathcing TV, and generally overstaying my welcome. I am currently watching TV. I stand up and glance in the mirror, and notice something white on the back of my jeans. These are new blue jeans, Old Navy, and some of the trendiest jeans I have owned up to this point, which is to say I did not buy them on sale at Target. And there is something white on the back of them. The long white stripe on my pants turns out to be in my pants. It's my underwear, showing through the large tear in the back of my jeans. I have been wearing these jeans all day, walking around campus, going to class, eating a meal in the college commons, and I have no idea how long I have been displaying my white boxer briefs from the back of my pants. I ask one of my roommates about the whole in my pants. "Oh, yeah, I saw that. I thought you knew." I tie my jacket around my waist before walking across the campus for my meeting.
I do not have the best luck with jeans. It's been a long time since I outgrew my jeans, so now I wear them several times a week for years until the fall apart. Or I take them apart. Meaning, I pull the strings at the cuffs until I have large pieces of denim trailing my feet as I walk and pick at the thin fabric on the knees until there is no frabric there at all, just a large, ever widening hole. I had two pairs of jeans that I liked very much, until this week, when within days of each other, they both surrended and developed holes in the left knee. I've tried wearing jeans with holes in the knees before, some people seem to think it's trendy, but the hole just keeps getting bigger, until the bottom half of the leg is about to fall off and you end up wearing semi cutoffs. I'm not the type of person who wears cutoffs. And besides, it's winter here now, and while I appreciate a cool breeze as much as the next guy, I'd rather not have it going up my pants.
So I went to gap, to buy new jeans, where they sell the boot cut jeans I like. (I know, It's very coporate and everything, but one of the reasons they'r so propular is becuase they make good clothing, or at least the children from their factories in third world countries do. Oh, just let me enjoy my trendy jeans.) Anyway, the only problem with these jeans is that they do all this stuff to them. I bought jeans that come with these creases in them, and thesestrange faded stripes across the front. I bought some that weren't too obvious, but some of those pants look like a wrinkly zebra. I guess the jeans are suppossed to look old and worn and loved. Well, I've worn lots of jeans for long periods of time, and I've never gotten a permanent crease and zebra stripes on mine. I have no idea how one would get those sort of markings on blue jeans. I think it requires special equipment, and I don't think you can do it while wearing them.
I like these new jeans, but the stripes and fake creases make me feel conspicious, like someone you see at a grocery store wearing those tight pants and and a t-shirt that says something like "Abercrombie surf" and one of those tight zipper sweatshirt things that models wear in catalogs. Real people who do real things don't wear these clothes. And yet here I am, in my button down shirt that I got from goodwill 6 years ago, and my trendy pants, personally creased by children in China.
I do not have the best luck with jeans. It's been a long time since I outgrew my jeans, so now I wear them several times a week for years until the fall apart. Or I take them apart. Meaning, I pull the strings at the cuffs until I have large pieces of denim trailing my feet as I walk and pick at the thin fabric on the knees until there is no frabric there at all, just a large, ever widening hole. I had two pairs of jeans that I liked very much, until this week, when within days of each other, they both surrended and developed holes in the left knee. I've tried wearing jeans with holes in the knees before, some people seem to think it's trendy, but the hole just keeps getting bigger, until the bottom half of the leg is about to fall off and you end up wearing semi cutoffs. I'm not the type of person who wears cutoffs. And besides, it's winter here now, and while I appreciate a cool breeze as much as the next guy, I'd rather not have it going up my pants.
So I went to gap, to buy new jeans, where they sell the boot cut jeans I like. (I know, It's very coporate and everything, but one of the reasons they'r so propular is becuase they make good clothing, or at least the children from their factories in third world countries do. Oh, just let me enjoy my trendy jeans.) Anyway, the only problem with these jeans is that they do all this stuff to them. I bought jeans that come with these creases in them, and thesestrange faded stripes across the front. I bought some that weren't too obvious, but some of those pants look like a wrinkly zebra. I guess the jeans are suppossed to look old and worn and loved. Well, I've worn lots of jeans for long periods of time, and I've never gotten a permanent crease and zebra stripes on mine. I have no idea how one would get those sort of markings on blue jeans. I think it requires special equipment, and I don't think you can do it while wearing them.
I like these new jeans, but the stripes and fake creases make me feel conspicious, like someone you see at a grocery store wearing those tight pants and and a t-shirt that says something like "Abercrombie surf" and one of those tight zipper sweatshirt things that models wear in catalogs. Real people who do real things don't wear these clothes. And yet here I am, in my button down shirt that I got from goodwill 6 years ago, and my trendy pants, personally creased by children in China.
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