Friday night lights still shining bright
“So, you’re a band parent, huh? Boy, is your life about to change.”
My wife and I heard that a lot a few months ago after our daughter, a rising freshman at Tuscola High School, made the Color Guard. I had only the vaguest notion of what the Color Guard was, and no recollection at all of whether there was such a thing when I pounded the bass drum in the marching band for Alleghany High back in the 1970s. I was a freshman myself once upon a time, adapting as fast and as well as I could to this intense new world around me. Now it is my daughter’s turn.
We were more than a little surprised when she told us that she wanted to try out, since she did not really show much interest in extracurricular activities during her middle school years. In particular, she has about as much interest in sports as I have in the pop music she is always insisting that I hear when we are going somewhere in the car.
“Isn’t that great, daddy? What do you think? It’s One Direction.”
“I think that One Direction is to the Beatles as Donald Trump is to Abraham Lincoln.”
“But what does that mean?”
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“It means that I’m going with the Beatles and Lincoln.”
“I think it means you’re old.”
“That, too.”
When she came home a few months ago and announced that she was trying out, we were surprised, but also encouraged. Wouldn’t it be great if she could get a jumpstart on her new and terrifying social life by getting involved in such a big group with such a wide range of people in it? Wouldn’t it look good on her high school record if, for example, a scholarship committee might be interested in a few years?
What we did not fully comprehend was just how much our own lives would change if she made the team. There would be band camp and car washes and bake sales and weekend competitions in other counties and a trip to Disney, where the group will be performing in October. And football games. Lots of football games.
I hadn’t been to a high school football game in at least two decades before we attended the home opener with McDowell High School last Friday. We got to C.E. Weatherby Stadium two hours early to help with traffic, but there were already enough volunteers, so I took my 10-year-old son up into the stands, where we watched both teams stretch and go through a series of warm-up drills.
As the fans began to drift into the stands in small clusters and the threatening storm fell apart and drifted away, we could see the band gathering on one end of the field and the bustling concession stand on the other. I realized that in spite of the vast differences in the world outside the stadium between now and when I was in high school, some things really do never change. One of them is high school football.
On our way in, we had passed by the McDowell bus, where their players — some of them shirtless, some already in pads, some getting taped up — were all gathered outside around the coach, who was going over the things they have been talking about all week in practice. I thought of my friends on our high school football team — the mighty Trojans — how they wore their jerseys to class on game day, how focused they were an hour before the game, how revved up they were when they tore through the huge paper banner that read “Trojans #1” before gathering on the side for the playing of the national anthem.
I thought of my daughter, who was off somewhere else finishing her own preparations with the other “guard girls” and the band. I knew she was as nervous as she’s ever been, but I also knew that she had been putting in extra hours during the week, surviving a mid-week crisis in confidence, before emerging from practice on Thursday evening with something like serenity.
On game day, she was all business, ticking off items on her list in the morning before school, gathering her gear, checking herself in the mirror for a quick once-over before bolting out the door. Suddenly, she seemed distressingly closer to 30 years old than 14. Indeed, our lives are changing.
We didn’t win the game and her performance wasn’t entirely flawless, but we all had a great night nevertheless. We’ll get ‘em next week. During high school, nothing is bigger than next Friday night.
Some things never change.
(Chris Cox is a writer and teacher who lives in Haywood County. His most recent book, The Way We Say Goodbye, is available at regional bookstores and on Amazon. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)
