25 or 6 to 4 {EDITING}

I Guess I Have Friends

Dylan tapped me on the shoulder as I raised the trombone to my lips. "Hey," he said. "come with me."

"Why?" I questioned.

He shrugged. "Don't worry about it. Just come on."

I raised an eyebrow. "Okay then..." I followed him out the door at the right corner of the band room. "So...what am I doing?"

Dylan pointed to the end of the hall. "Stand over there at attention."

I knit my eyebrows. "What?"

"Initiation," he said. "Stand over there at attention."

"...you're serious?" He had often joked when we did something wrong that he would make us do a fifteen minute initiation. They had talked about doing it in the chat, but I had missed the last sectionals, so I wasn't sure if they were joking or not.

"Yes," he answered., annoyed. "Stand over there at attention with your back turned for 15 minutes. If you put your arm down, move, cough, sneeze, or laugh, I'm going to add on another minute."

I giggled. "You do know that's impossible for me, right?" I asked.

Dylan gave me a look. "Then you're going to be here for a while." He nodded his head towards the hallway. I shrugged. Alright, then. I held the trombone up in front of my chest and positioned my arm in a right angle, parallel to the floor.

The first thing you want to know about initiation: it isn't fun. Being completely honest, I was never mad that I had to do initiation - I do see why they had me do it - but I can't say that I enjoyed it, either. If you asked me to do it again, I would probably say no, but I did not hold a grudge on Dylan afterwards.

Initiation, if you take a glance at it, looks really simple. It's not. It's really not. It's easy for the first two or three minutes, but after that, you start to wish your arm would drop off so you'd have an excuse to put it down. Although the trombone is really light, holding it at attention is like holding your hand up in the air for forever waiting for the teacher to call on you. If you think that's exhausting, initiation is worse. At least in that situation you can switch hands, prop it up with your other arm on your desk, or just flat out give up and wait until the next period to go to the bathroom. In this situation, moving is just going to give you even more time standing there with your arm up.

So there I was, standing in the middle of the hallway holding a trombone. After about four minutes, Aaron walked up to the door I was standing in front of and raised his eyebrows. I gave him a look that said "don't ask," and he just shrugged and slipped past me.

Luckily for me, I was the only one doing initiation at the time, and Dylan was the only one watching. The rest of the section (that I could hear) was working on On Wisconsin back in the band room. Whenever I was absolutely sure that Dylan was not in the hallway (he was playing his trombone so when it sounded more muffled, I knew he wasn't watching), I brought my arm down for about ten seconds before putting it up again. He never found out, and I didn't get extra time. I was about to, since Dylan came in to tell me that I had two more minutes left, and I thought it was over, so I broke attention. He didn't give me extra time, though. He should have since I was cheating, but he didn't. To be fair, though I did survive for a very long time, I can't keep my arm up for fifteen minutes straight for the life of me.

I'm such a rebel.

For most of this time, I tried to keep my mind off what I was doing as much as possible. Survival tip: put most of the weight of the instrument on your right hand instead of your left. Otherwise, you're just giving your left arm more work while your right isn't doing anything. Come to think of it, I was kind of coaxing myself as if I were dying. It sure did feel like it after ten minutes.