Friday, July 25, 2008

This One Time at Band Camp...I Lost my Mind

Let me preface this post by saying we are truly blessed by our living situation. Ben's job allows us to live in an apartment rent-free. Nice situation, right? Yes, it is. We don't pay rent or utilities or internet or anything. I mean it doesn't get much better. I thank the Lord for this opportunity at this point in our lives. That being said...

Our apartment is in a dorm building where 300 other students live from September to May. We coexist peacefully with these blessed students. We hear occasional rounds of wrestling up stairs, and there are only a handful of times when I look at Ben and say, "Do you think someone just died upstairs?" To which he replies, "Eh."
Living with these 300 college students for most of the year is fine.

But for one weekend every summer, my inner-Mr. Hyde comes out. For one weekend every summer, a large band camp lives in our building for several days, and I weigh whether or not it would be acceptable to storm upstairs in my pajamas, hair askew, and scream obscenities at innocent high school students for interrupting my precious, precious REM cycle. I know when they have arrived because at 9:00 a.m. (when I'm still sleeping...b/c I get to b/c I wake up at 5:00 a.m. during the school year so get off my back) someone starts playing the drums in the bedroom above our bedroom. Loud, loud drums. That weekend, my friends, has arrived. They are here.

Riddle me this Internet (and I know that I teach high schoolers for a living): why do high schoolers have to scream their conversations with one another across a courtyard? Why? WHY? Why does it take an HOUR to walk from our building to the track across the street (where they practice)? Why does the smallest kid always play the tuba? The smallest kid with a brace on his leg? What?

I'm all for the arts in education, but ummm...not in my place of residence.

Oh Band Camp, you are the bane of my existence.

2 comments:

rachel said...

My brother was totally the small kid with the tuba. Minus the leg brace. Plus the stitches from dropping the tuba on his head one time.

Unknown said...

It's either the smallest kid or the largest....always. Either way, I feel for you sister!
Remember our "band-camp" days...ahh yes. We were not as cool those days... :)