Kit-Kats & Love : A true story

Two

Two

Summer of 2014 was pretty nice. I babysat from when we left school to about August. I got paid decently, since I was babysitting my cousins. $150 per week if I worked the whole week. I worked about 8-9 hours a day. In June and early July, I did 5 days a week. Late July I only worked 2-3 days a week, causing my pay to range from $75 to $100. Also, in July, on certain days the guard came in for "clinics" which was basically doing basics the whole time and working on our formation. August I didn't work at all, because of one thing.

Band camp.

Living hell on Earth your first year of it, but a memorable experience.

Band camp for us takes two weeks. Each day ran from 9 in the morning to 3:30 in the afternoon. Lunch took place around noon, and lasted about an hour. Sometimes we were let out early on those days. Friday was the shorter day. That went from 9 to 12:30. That was a pizza day as well. Either the music boosters provided it or it was a guard thing. We usually spent half the day outside and half the day inside. Outside was almost always first, because it got hotter throughout the day. Inside we worked on sectionals, where it would be the band in the music room and the guard on the stage. Certain days, our guard instructor, Ms. Amanda, would not be there as she was also teaching Palisades. Weird, huh?

When the guard was alone, we often did basics since we weren't taught any work for the show yet (Maybe we were taught the first tune, but it's not clear in my mind). Basics included moves like cones, pole hits, drop spins, flourishes, and some easier tosses. We danced, sashays, tondues, passes, and sometimes we did some leaps. Otherwise, we fooled around. Originally we would have had 5 guard members. The one girl, Alicia, did baton outside of school and was planning to do baton for marching band, but she couldn't do it the whole show. She wanted her way. Miss Amanda favored her because she went through a different teacher and had outside experience. The other girl, Sarah, was in field hockey, had a job, and was basically forced by her mom to participate in guard. She had no interest; Amber, Hope, and I could tell. She was rude too like Alicia, and they often cliqued up, away from us. Well we shrugged it off, and we all knew we didn't like her.

Alicia quit about 3 days in. Sarah didn't show up most of the time. But we did manage to find another guard member, Maggie. Band camp was lively then.

Now more into band camp. Being as stupid as I was, I didn't put on sunscreen or wore a hat. Luckily, I don't burn easily, except on my face. I was red. The whole first week of band camp went like this. I wasn't in the mood for waking up around 8 in the morning to go to band camp for about seven hours. I often packed peanut butter and Nutella sandwiches for my lunch, and had mio, one of those liquid water flavor things, to flavor my water for the day. Sam, a Tenor Sax player, often asked for it and would squirt a decent amount in her mouth. Let me tell you, that stuff tastes SOUR. Don't ever take a shot of water flavoring.

Band camp took place at our high school, not at an actual camp. I wish it did though. I love camping. Anyways, we came up with a lot of "This one time, at band camp..." sayings. "This one time, at band camp, I went to do a leap and slipped." "This one time, at band camp, we had a mio chugging contest." "This one time, at band camp, I said Shawn was as cute as a little duckling." "This one time, at band camp, Maggie tripped during basics." Band camp was lively. The second week of camp, we would come in certain themes, like pajama day, costume day, superhero day, etc. That Friday, we, as the whole band, had a pizza party. The guard sat by themselves, while the band sat by themselves as well. This was normal, but I wished that the band and guard would bond. Sam was the bonding point this year, she was a senior. But that meant that once she was gone, the bond would be even worse, or up to someone else. She was the lively one. She made marching band fun.

"Rose, you plan on staying, right?"

"So far, yes. I love band. Why do you ask?"

"You will take my position next year."

"But I can't play a-"

"Sssshhhh. You will be the lively one in the band. You will be the connector. You will be the new me!"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I am sure love."

I will remember this conversation. Especially that I would be the new "Sam". I looked up to her. She had a pretty singing voice, and she was so outgoing and happy. She was always so confident in her actions. She was pretty too. I wanted to be like her.

After band camp was finished, we still met up three nights a week for practice. Monday and Thursday nights were the whole band. Tuesday nights were guard. Wednesdays were drumline and pit practice. Practices usually ran from 6pm to 9pm, but some days we only ran till 8 or didn't have practice. Not having practice was mainly only for guard, as Amanda only came certain days to practice. She was teaching both Palisades and us, and had to find a schedule that worked out for both schools.

Then, school started on the 25th of August, a Monday. It was a really hot day, and considering that the dress code changed once again, I was pissed. Shorts had to go down to the top of the knee. What kind of girl owns shorts that long? Luckily, I had one pair: catty basketball shorts. I got them as a "prize" for being a good student. In our school, every semester, there's student of the semesters chosen from the teachers. I was chosen by my 9th grade English teacher, Mrs. DeBoer for my first prize. I loved her as a teacher, and actually had her for Spanish II this year. My second one will be brought up later in this amazing book. :)

I hated going back to school. I found it hard to adjust to the time frame, but was easily formed to my schedule. My schedule was quite cramped. For the first semester I only had two study halls every five days. The rest of my classes were quite rough. I was taking almost all Honors classes. Considering we don't have one for world cultures, but we have Advanced Placement (AP) and College Prep (CP) I took the CP class just to be safe. I heard that AP courses were tough, and history wasn't my strong point. The class difficulty went like this from easiest to hardest:

Applied < College Prep < Honors < Advanced Placement

If you took Honors or AP classes, your grade also got a bit of a curve. A 4% curve. So say for example if you got a 86 in your honors english class. It would be a 90% with the curve. This curve applied to almost all assignments as well. A 73 on a test sometimes meant a 77. Honors had its advantages like that and usually less homework, but stricter grading on tests, quizzes, etc. Plus, the troublemakers could never make it into these courses as you had to meet specific grade requirements the past year. So honestly, it wasn't that bad.

I had Biology first mod of the day. On day ones we had a double bio. Sometimes we did labs, but most days we either took even more notes (in a notebook, not on the computers provided for us) or took some kind of quiz. We had these horrible projects called Chapter Quests that were given to us once or twice a month. They took about 10 hours to do and consisted of several pieces: section assessments, online activities, web graphs, it sucked. We can basically say this was the first class I ever got a C in on my report card for the first marking period. I will mention this again later. My other classes were better.

You're probably very bored at this point, hearing about my life. You want to hear the good, juicy stuff of Shose. Trust me, I get it. But I need to allow this story to develop. Plus, my life experiences blend into future situations with Shose that I will not mention.

So just wait.