Festivus Among Us

Every October the Birdville High School Marching Band hosts a Marching Festival. I attended exactly 4 of these in past years. One for each year my son was part of all that. My daughter was a part of it as well with her year or so of Flags that she did. It was the coolest thing ever to have both of my kids on the field at the same time, doing very different things, yet working together. I had to eventually come up with a system to be able to watch both of them, though. I would take turns with each game or competition and try to watch each one depending on whose turn it was. Of course, very rarely did this work. I always wanted to watch both!

When I get home from work and open up my house and hear the bands warming up, I always tell myself that I sure would like to just hop on over there and sit for awhile and watch. But I never have. Mostly because I know the really small schools perform in the early morning hours and although cool to watch, they just don't compare to the bigger schools with massive amounts of marchers on the field. Those schools play up in the late afternoon and evening when I'm usually asleep. Plus, I got very spoiled when my son went to college and his first two years included marching with the UTA band. There is nothing more awesome then seeing a college marching band live. It makes the really big, really good high school marching bands look like the small school marching bands; weak and kind of boring.

So I'll sit here this morning and I'll enjoy the beautiful Fall air with the hint of marching band memories that I will fondly cherish the rest of my days. Not only my own days of marching, but more cherished, my children's days of marching.