Kristabella: Full of Snark Since 1977

Posted By Kristabella on May 9, 2012

This past weekend I spent with a lot of people from my youth. My friend Darcie organized a walk to support a fight against MS. It was out in Naperville. And because that is far and I’m not a morning person, I drove out Saturday evening to spend some time with my friend Darcie, whom I’ve known since I was a shorty. Literally. I was 5-4. She’s known me since before my growth spurt in high school. Which means we’ve known each other for like 20 years. Yikes!

Anyway, for those of you who may not know, I was a band geek in High School. I was in the concert band and the marching band and I even played in the orchestra pit for the school’s musicals. If it was band, I was all about it.

That was until sometime in my junior year. At that point, I enjoyed it enough to finish out my high school career as a band nerd, but I wasn’t as gung-ho. Long gone were my desires of continuing my music career after high school. I was going to put down my saxophone at the end of my senior year and never pick it up again. And that’s just what I did.

My former high school band director, Mr. Snoeck, is currently battling Multiple Sclerosis. Darcie, being a fellow band director herself (she did not stop being a band geek after high school), has stayed close with Mr. Snoeck and they are now colleagues. She wanted to do something for him, so she organized this walk for him and he, along with other people I hadn’t seen since graduating high school in 1995, also showed up.

High school was not the best time of my life. It wasn’t the worst, either. But I didn’t really come into my own and become who I am today until college and the years after. That was when I finally stopped doing the things that I thought I should do, and did the things I wanted to do. I learned what I liked and I did those things. It’s how I ended up working in sports.

So being around all these people from my past was…weird, to say the least. Darcie and I have been friends since puberty, so we will always be friends. If you’re friends with someone that long, it doesn’t just go away. I mean, when I walked in the door of her house she was like “I love that it feels like we saw each other last week, and not like two years ago.” That’s friendship, right there.

But the rest of the people, well, they are all still kind of the same. See, they were already adults and teachers when we were in high school. So they are who they are. And they are into band and music and teaching. And I’m…..not.

I spent most of the walk with one of Darcie’s friends. Because when I had a conversation with one of my old band directors, someone I loved when I was in high school, it was awkward. She asked what I had been up to in the last 15 or so years. I filled her in – Arizona State, 49ers, etc. It was just so forced because I didn’t still play an instrument. I didn’t pursue band after high school. I got as far away from band and music as I could the day I graduated.

And well, that’s where the conversation stopped. I mean, I’m sure there is more we could have discussed. But we don’t have the same interests. And unlike high school me, I didn’t have to be polite and conform and be that band geek. Thirty four year old me wasn’t going to apologize for anything and is damn proud of who she is. So I just walked ahead and found something else to talk about.

Categories: Mayor of Band Geekdom
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