Despite All Obstacles Part II

Extracurricular

PATTHEW'S STORY

This evening.

Every Thursday and Friday, the school band practices for every home game for three hours. The Parrots had their away game, yesterday. They won. Their away games are always on Wednesdays.

After day games, Matt sneaks out to hang with his team after supper and makes sure he heads home before curfew. He's smart enough to do that. We know how mom is.

Bro owns the Anime Club, which is on the ground floor from 2:45 to 4:00, after school on Thursdays. Lucky for him, band practice started at five and ends at eight. On day practices, his vice president who doesn't do band or any other activity takes over.

Shortcake will be singing in the school choir soon for the Christmas concert on Thursday evenings at 6:30 to 8:30, but she doesn't have to worry about missing choir, since it's in basketball season and we only have day practices on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 2:35 to 5:35, since both home and away games for basketball season vary a lot and all are night games from six to nine.

Thursdays and Fridays are also the days we don't study at the library for football seasons. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for basketball seasons are those days as well. We study at home through the weekend. That's downtime for me.

We practice in the music room. There are twenty members in marching band. Twenty is the maximum number in every group here, both classes and extracurricular activities. Bro, Shortcake, I, and seventeen others. We practice band for both basketball and football.

Basketball try-outs don't start until October 29th and basketball season doesn't start until November 26th, this year.

I have to know these things for band practices only. Whenever the football or basketball league have try-outs, the marching band, the cheerleaders, the color guards and the drill team also have try-outs.

We also dress in school spirit colors: brown, yellow, and green. The cheerleaders, the drill team, the color guards, and the ball players all wear these colors. These colors represent the Palm Trees Private School System, which is the name of the three schools I went to for the rest of my school years.

Brown is the branch, which stands for boldness, because the tree stays firm on the ground through trials.

Green is the leaves, which stands for gratitude, because they embrace the growth and development the weather gives them.

And, yellow is the sun, which stands for Y.O.L.O (You Only Live Once), because the sun can only give you as much time to yearn for something valuable.

Also, we have our Parrot logo, where the background is blue for the water and two palm trees behind the happy red parrot on our uniforms. The logo says "Palm Trees's Parrots".

The ball players each have their own varsity jackets, which is $50 per person. Matt has one.

Because we're practicing at night this time, that means the Parrots have their home game on Saturday in the daytime. If we practice during the day, then both home and away games are at nighttime. When we practice our try-outs is the opposite of when they play their home games, for more practice time between games. That means I know what Matt is up to on Saturday....

Before we start our practice, we take deep breaths, stand, stretch and then roll our shoulders to warm up. After warming up, we watch the video of the song we're playing, which is the song that the color guards will be dancing to with us.

"A one, a two, a one, two, three, go!" Our band teacher, also our music and orchestra teacher, Mrs. Brooks, commands. She seems shy in person, but she's actually really cool, social and kind. Don't fool her kindness for weakness. She caused all students who crossed her to get suspended.