The Wrong Band

My friend S. has a theory about people who were once cool vs. those who have never managed to rise above “marginally acceptable” in the overall social system . He shared this theory with me a few years ago while we were at a work function watching a (married) HR-type hump the leg of our (notoriously lascivious) overseas sales dude on the dance floor while we threw back drinks at one of those lame company bonding events that not only involved sumo wrestling, but also featured one of those bouncing moonwalk things. Because nothing says “bonding” like donning sweaty plastic fatman outfits and clotheslining your colleagues after many many drinks – ooh ooh, and also dry humping on the dance floor, not to mention getting extremely drunk and wondering if your boss is actually hitting on you, or is it that you’ve had too many gin and tonics? Not that it’s ever happened to me.

The year prior, at the same annual event, I actually raced around the floor of a convention center on some sort of souped-up motorized toilet with wheels. Normally, I don’t go for that kind of thing, but it was a face-off with my European counterpart who spent most of the summer on holiday (NINE WEEKS, PEOPLE) and yammering on about “beauty sleep” while I worked until 1 a.m. contemplating how many apples I could stuff in the bags underneath my eyes for the trip to hell. So when the opportunity presented itself, I was bound and determined to exact revenge and beat her siesta’d ass, even if it involved setting aside my dignity to straddle an American Standard.

For the record, I lost. I couldn’t figure out where the accelorator was or how to steer or…well, anything, and I wound up jamming myself and the toilet between a pillar and the fire extinguisher, requiring the toilet proprietor to pluck me out while my opponent raced around the orange cones to victory. Story of my life.

Anyway, the dry humping raged along on the dance floor, and after trying to play it cool and figure out how one of us – any of us – could snap a picture of it with our camera phones (we totally did and yes, we shared it with my boss of all people, who found it as amusing as we did), we ended up talking about the kind of person who initiates that sort of public debacle. His theory is that people like this woman were never, ever cool in their entire lives, and are always trying to make up for it by being extra obnoxious in their adult lives. I’m not sure of the specifics of this theory, or why it applies, but I do know for sure that I have never really been cool in the traditional sense, save for one completey ill-advised time in college, and lo, it was very bad.

I have mentioned it before, but I played the oboe all through middle and (oh my God) high school. Clarinet, too, and oh yes, I dabbled in cello. I can still play the first two pretty well (seriously), but the cello never really stuck. My senior photo? Is me in a marching band uniform, and honestly, if that doesn’t scream – well, I don’t know what it screams, but it can’t be good. But the thing is, I totally loved it. I had no idea that it wasn’t cool until I went to college, after my former high school boyfriend was ahead of me and joined the marching band IN COLLEGE, and reported back that no, people didn’t find drum majors hot the same way we did in Pennsylvania, and yeah, maybe agreeing to play the saxophone at a Big East school wasn’t such a great idea, because the ridicule factor was pretty high.

My high school band competed in local and statewide competitions, and we took it extremely seriously, my God, SO SERIOUSLY. I remember when our head majorette (twirler, if you will), fell off the podium in the middle of a really crucial moment, and I was so torn up – just inconsolable – on the field, my salty tears falling into my open mouth as I heaved sobs around my clarinet mouthpiece and tried to march on. I was ENRAGED that she could just FALL OFF like that, without consideration for the rest of us who worked so damn hard at marching around, all serious-like, while we played “Shine Down” for the screaming crowds in wool uniforms (oh, and also hats with giant feathers. Yes.)

We also played football games. Oh yes, we did. And liked it. I still have absolutely no idea about the game of football, but I can tell you the exact moment it’s appropriate to break into a rousing rendition of “Louie, Louie,” or, if you prefer, the Notre Dame fight song. In addition, because I know someone is going to ask, yes, I totally went to band camp for six years. Six years, because I was apparently an elite enough oboe player to make it to the high school band while I was still in middle school. Well, that and oboe players are hard to find, so they were desperate. But yes, band camp. But I can tell you there was no sex involved, but oh, we totally said things like, “This one time, at band camp?” all the time, because a lot of shit went down at band camp. Band camp was where the magic HAPPENED.

Anyway, back to band competitions: I was served up a plate of cosmic comeuppance for the podium incident a few months later when I hyperventilated, then subsequently fainted while playing a really important oboe solo at a concert band competition in Virginia. (I can’t believe I typed the words “really important oboe solo” in reference to myself in a public forum, but there you have it.) There were paper bags offered, heads hitting the ground and oh my GOD, the tears and disappointment, because I botched my solo, and NEARLY FAINTED to boot, bringing the whole thing to a screeching halt. My band director – who, by the way, I still keep in touch with, and adore, honestly – ended up having to help me off the stage in my sweaty wool uniform in front of everyone, and if there was ever a moment I wanted to die, that was it. Oh, and we lost the competition, and everyone blamed me, including me. The bus ride home was AWESOME, and full of much mockery from the twirlers I’d so mercilessly railed on only weeks prior. Le sigh.

Anyway, not cool, not cool at all over here. And by ‘not cool’ I mean, actually dorky for reals, not hipster geeky uncool that everyone likes to throw around with the tech boom and all. There were no hot geeks involved here. This is epic, authentic oboe-playing uncool. So in college? I totally planned to try to be cool. And I succeeded, and hot damn, it was a bad idea, and before I knew it, I’d put myself back in the uncool category, with a little more pride. But really, I have gone long enough, so that social experiment dissection is just going to have to wait until tomorrow, where we can all decide if my Moment of Ill-Advised Cool is the reason I never dry-humped a married man on a dance floor.

*Tori Amos

25 comments November 8th, 2006