Scout's Honor
During high school, rifling was in my blood. I don't mean the steely single-barreled kind of rifle, but the glam polystyrene type used in color guards of drum & bugle corps and marching bands. Really it all started in junior high, when I and a couple band-mates, having grown bored with playing our instruments in marching band, convinced our band director to let us start a small rifle corps to complement the color guard. Miraculously, he agreed, and the tiny Central Junior High Rifle Corps was born. A couple of us continued with the rifle corps into our high school years, for by then corps style marching bands had taken off, and Pat Ellison, our new band director par excellence adopted the style quickly and ferociously. When I was chosen as drum major my senior year, I jumped at the opportunity to combine rifling with my drum major duties, engaging in cheesy (but effective) moves like marching down the middle of two rows of rifle corps members, catching double tosses as they were thrown to me from alternating lines. Hey, it was the 80s. I couldn't let my long satin cape, snow-white gauntlets and scout hat with its enormous feather plume languish without any added theatrics.
Ah yes, it was all too much. But I was hooked. Actually I was fanatical. And I dreamed achingly and ardently of becoming a member of my favorite corps, the Madison Scouts. Ever since I saw them live at a Drum Corps International championship event, my heart belonged to them. How I yearned to be a member of their elite (all-male!) rifle corps, to wear those hunter-green tunics, the dazzling white hats and proudly sport that coveted silver fleur de lis. I wanted those men to take me away from the selfish misery that I found in my dreary existence in Arkansas, to escort me atop their strong shoulders onto the sleek tourbus, where I would travel the country with them, laughing loudly when appropriate and nodding with knowing affirmation at the many private jokes that would be shared with me. We would eat Wendy's hamburgers, Ruffles potato chips (the real ones, not the cheap knock-offs we were only allowed to eat at home), guzzle Orange Crush and share pillows when we fell asleep. Finally, life would be rich and meaningful.
Then, in the middle of my junior year, the choir director came up to me after my audition for the school musical, grabbed my earlobe firmly, leaned over to me and snarled, "If you don't sign up for choir next term, I'm gonna twist this ear plum off your head!" Astounded and afraid, I grumbled something incoherent and walked off in bewildered ecstasy. What? I could sing? And then the veil dropped. For years, my sister, two grades ahead of me in school, had told me that I couldn't carry a tune in a basket, even to the point of slapping me when I'd try. It occurred to me that day, walking home after the audition, that my sister had simply protected her territory. She was the singer, and I was the band geek. And ne'er the two shall mix...at least not while she was still in school. But the year of that fateful ear-twisting, my sister was graduating. And sure enough, that evening at the dinner table, she made a confession.
"Sandy," she said, "you did good at the musical auditions today. You should think about joinin' the choir. I think you'd probably even make All-State."
Well, I did start singing in the choir, and I did make All-State (11th chair 1st-tenor my junior year, 2nd chair my senior year), thank you very much, dear sister. And so my love for the Scouts faded, as did my passion for achieving excellence on the clarinet. [Sidebar: Ms Ellison, herself a fine clarinettist, had been grooming me for the position of 1st-chair All-State clarinet since early in my high-school years. But I let her down my senior year. I knew that choir and drama had cut terribly into the time I had available to practice clarinet. I feared I wouldn't make 1st chair, and I chose to bail on the auditions rather than risk having to face Ms Ellison, shamed by defeat. It was the first time in my life that I had to choose between passions, and I handled it less than gracefully.]
With the discovery of singing, my focus shifted. Soon the strains of Malagueña that seemed constantly to occupy my brain were replaced by the likes of One (singular sensation...) and High flying adored. Spats and gauntlets were abandoned for jazz shoes and leg warmers. Practice sessions in the backyard with my ruined Daisy BB gun were stopped in favor of after-school jazz and modern dance training. I kept up the musical theater dream for a few years, but college brought new discoveries, and instead of Broadway, I eventually found myself in Holland on a Fulbright, studying the vocal performance practices associated with Bach and Lully.
Life can take one in many directions. I know there are roads less traveled out there, and I have no doubt that I am sure to end up wandering down a few more of them.
