Life of the Band Nerds

The Great Monsoon of the Band Room

We had now entered into the rainy season of the year, or what was supposed to be Fall. Living in the Central Valley in California had it's ups and downs. Pros: plenty of produce, sushi isnt expensive, drive an hour to the west and you get the coast, drive an hour to the east and you got the mountains. Cons: wind, wind, wind, and we had a grand total of two seasons. We had Summer, and we had fall/spring. There was no difference between fall and spring. Maybe around Christmas time we would get a week of real cold where no one wanted to go outside and was perfect hot chocolate wheather. Again we were in the supposed season of Autumn which just basically meant rain.

Rain isn't that bad. I Personally like it, but that day, everyone was sick of the rain. It had poured constantly all day. This was the most i could ever remember it raining. I had band 6th period, then P.E. and then the end of the day. Because of the rain no one had been outside, so as me and my fellow band nerds wer trecking across campus, we discovered that there was a puddle. This wasnt a normal little splish-splash puddle. No, the rain had basically filled up the little dip in the black top that led to the drainage area, that happened to be right in front of the line of portables. But that wasn't all! As we walked past it, having to go all the way around, we noticed a foul smell in the air. And guess what! Not only was there a large amount of water, it all happened to come from the sewers! Lucky us! It had rained so much that the sewer had overflowed and was currently spewing onto the black top while more water was flooding down from the sky. 

Being the loyal band students we were, we weren't gonna let this flood to get on our way of music, so we trudged around the "puddle" and entered the band room safe and sound. We then continued to go along with band clas as normal untill one of us decided to look out the open door. Turns out, the water level had continued to ride during that twenty minutes in the room, and it proceeded to flood halfway up the ramp to the room. We were effectively trapped. Knowing we couldnt stay there, we searched for a way out and there was only one option.

We had to go under the railing to a dry-ish spot in between the portables. Once we were under and on the other side, Mr. C proceeded to give us backpacks and instruments over the railing. We fondly recal this time as escaping the band room Indiana Jones style. We had to walk on the edge of "puddle" and made our way to the cafeteria. Keep in mind that this was another walk across campus in poaring rain. Upon reaching the cafeteria we found much of our eighth grade class as there was two classes of P.E. next period and by this time it was nearly time for last period. Being the lovely students we were, we convinced our teacher to let us go with the rest of the band into the back room and finish off the day with music.

We then, from that point on, referred to this event as The Monsoon. The next day, the smell was worse then ever, and Sydney kindly decided to splash in one of the left over puddles, effectively splashing us with sewer water. As you can imagine, this was quite an experiance for all of us.