This one time....at an elementary band concert.....

Monday my son, Your royal highness, had his 5th grade band concert.

And let me just say before I get into this, I have a very very strong appreciation for band.  I played in

band from the time I was in 5th grade, all the way through college.  I met my husband at high school band camp, and almost all of my friends can be traced back to meeting at band, or some other sort of musical or theatrical endeavor that I was a part of at some time in my life.  Band is in my DNA.  Band is a part of me. This one time at band camp?  YES, I  have those stories (probably not as exciting as some of the racier stories in American Pie, but stories none the less).  So just know, I LOVE the arts, I LOVE band, and the fact that my son wanted to play in it in any capacity made me squeal like a little school girl, and weep tears of pride.

Also.  If you were to ask me who the best trumpet player in the entire world was, at this moment in time, I would proudly hold up a framed photo of my son playing his trumpet and say, "This redhead right here thank you very much."  So please no letters or posts in the comment section about what a terrible mother I am to post such a ranty blog about elementary school music concerts, and do I have a heart at all.  Yes I do, I love my child, he is wonderful and amazing, and all of that mom junk.  Back off.

To start this, I had to go to this concert, on my birthday.  My BIRTHDAY.  So there was no birthday dinner out.  There was barely time for cake after the dinner that I had to make  myself on my birthday, because people in this school district are complete freaks about showing up early to get a good seat, and apparently there is also a shortage of chairs at our elementary school. The concert started at 6:30, so we figured we would be wise to get there at 6, so we could sit up front and see our beloved.  We walked in, and I knew in an instant we did not arrive early enough.  The gym was packed!  What time did these freaks get there?  Did they just pack a picnic dinner and camp out right after the bell rang?  We were half an hour early, and we were in the back row!  What the heck??  Then to make matters worse, they didn't use ANY RISERS.  So we would be able to hear YRH play, but we were not going to be able to see diddly squat, because of all of the heads of the over acheivers that gathered here at 6 in the morning like it was opening night for a Star Wars movie.

I looked at the program, and not only was this for the band, but it was for the 4th grade orchestra, the 5th grade orchestra, the 5th grade band, the 3rd grade choir, the 4th grade choir, AND THE 5th GRADE CHOIR!!!  And everyone had like 5 songs!!

Now anyone who is even remotely familiar with kid performances always looks at the program and
does that kid performance math,"Okay, so 5 songs per group, times 3 or 4 minutes per song, equals.....holy hell!!  We are going to be here forever!!!"  And this is not like a high school performance where it might be even remotely well executed.  These kids are still really really early in the learning process of their instruments.  There are so many squeaks and squonks and screeches in just the band, let alone listening to the never ending flats and sharps of the violins that make you fluctuate from feeling depressed when they are flat, to wanting to break their violin when they are sharp, to the point that you are questioning your own knowledge of pitch by the end of the performance ("The whole thing couldn't have been that awful, could it?  Is there something wrong with my ears?  Am I tone deaf?  Or am I just entirely deaf after that?")

Meanwhile, as I am doing kid performance math in my head,  people keep filing in, and there is no where else to sit, so all of these moms and dads and realtives (grandmas and grandpas and extended family) are all standing in this elementarty lunchroom/gym and the body heat level is just rising.  It was gettng pretty hot and humid pretty fast.  The walls were sweating.

The teacher for orchestra gets up, and honestly, I think she must be cloistered in her rehearsal room by herself too much, because this woman LOVED the sound of her own voice.  She talked and talked, and talked about what the 4th graders have learned and how far they have come.  And then when they began to play, my only thought was, "Oh my god, if they are this bad NOW, what did they sound like BEFORE???"  The final song was not on the program, so she said, "Let's see if you can guess what this next song is."  I have to be honest.  They were playing the song "Dynamite", and I had NO idea what it was they were playing.  At all. It just sounded like a car riding extremely squeaky breaks in a rolling stop at a stop sign.

The 5th grade orchestra gets up there.  At one point the teacher, in a very long winded explanation, calls up her 3 soloists to do "Music from Harry Potter".  It was supposed to be the opening music from the movie. Three cats having a fight in an alley.  They groaned their way through it, as did I, and finaly it was time for my baby.

5th grade band!  I was so far back I couldn't see a thing, so I held up my sister's camera on her phone and zoomed in and could just make out the carrot top between two stands.  And just when they were counting off, the band director shifts over two paces and is RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY SHOT!!  Dang it!!  So I did not SEE my baby perform, but I knew from listening that he was amazing and was perfect and wonderful, and better than all of the rest of the kids.

By this time my toddlers were at maximum capacity for staying even remotely close to our seats.  They were trying to lay down, they were climbing all over the chair, sliding in and out of the hole in the back of the chair, hopping from one lap to another.  After my baby boy was done performing, I looked at the clock.  It was 7:30.  We had already been there for an hour and a half, and they were only half way done with this concert!!  Oh. My. Gosh.

The admiral looked at me, and without saying it, we knew that this might end up turning into the boat ride from vacation all over again if we didn't do something about it.  He gets up, and says tersely, "I am going to take them in the hall way to run around.  Stay here and get YRH after the concert is over."

Now the choir portion was a bit more entertaining than the orchestra, because most of these kids had been using their voices all of their lives and so had, in fact, perfected the use of it, so the pitch was a little more on target, making me not want to swing alternating moods of suicide, then aggravated assault.  So it passed a little more quickly.  But the only parts that didn't were the directors.  I am not sure, but I seriously think that it must be in the job description that if you are a director, teacher, or group leader for children in some area, when it comes time to give an opening statement, you are officially crowned Johnny Public Speaker, and are commissioned to just drone on and on about everything you did all year.  Look honey, we get it.  You had to listen to this all year, and now want to make us as miserable as you were by showing us what it felt like to be inescapably trapped like you were.  But darlin, we came to see our kids play, not hear you talk.  We had to hear them rehearse at home all year, we KNOW how far they have come.  You did great.  I will get you a gift card to BW3's for a drink after the concert if you will just get off the mic and start waving your arms.  It is hot in here and Gramma Fanny behind me has been standing since 6:20, and her poor varicose veins are about to implode.  Let's speed up this rodeo shall we?

The show ended at 8:10, almost 2 hours after it began.  I collect the boy, and go out and find my husband and toddlers are in the van watching a movie.  They WERE in the hallway running up and down, but apparently they started rolling around on the floor, and were rolling through what the Admiral deemed as blood, and he got grossed out and decided containment was key to survival at that point.  (Though I will say, it could have been blood, but chances are it was probably paint or marker, or jelly or some other kid goo.  Admiral does has a little bit of a germ thing, so in his eyes, it was foreign, so it had to be blood or some other life threatening pathogen, and the children must be saved.)

So for my birthday this year, this was my celebration.  And yes it was long, and hot, and loud, and awful, but for my kid, I would do it again in a heartbeat.  I do want to make a recommendation to the school for the future.

1) SEPARATE the grades PLEASE!  Have a performance for just the 3rd grade, and then just the 4th grade and then a special one for the graduating 5th grade.  They are going off to middle school, to never be a little child again, so a little bit of exclusiveness in this area is really not going to hurt any one, and it would seriously cut down on time. There also just might be a chair available for Gramma Fanny to sit down on too.

2) TIME LIMITS on teacher's talking.  Let's treat it like the Oscars, and after 30 seconds, have the band play them off with some music.

You implement these practices, and I can guarantee happy parents and happy kids, and then maybe just maybe I will have time to go out and eat a dinner on my birthday that I did NOT have to cook myself, and also not have to inhale my cake. (of which I also made myself. Businesses, there are gluten intolerant people that need to celebrate birthdays too, it would be nice to have bakery cakes that are gluten free!!  But that is a post for another time.....)