drewsant's Blog

Well, the first time in almost a month that I had to leave work because I was sick. I got glutened on Saturday, and managed to get through yesterday, but it was a bad sign when I was in the bathroom 3 times within the first 1 1/2 hrs of work, so I just went home. At least now I know when I get sick, if I just be extra vigilant, it won't last very long. I used to get diarrhea for months on end. I was actually used to having it. Now that I haven't had it for a while, it's frustrating. More about my high school years...It may not be very compelling, but I learned a valuable lesson through this experience......Since I was not able to participate in sports in school, I had to find other things to get involved in. I had started playing the flute when I was 9, and played all through high school. I started playing guitar when I was 13, and was talked into playing bass guitar about 6 months after starting to learn to play the guitar. That was totally against my will, and to this day, the experience has affected me so strongly that I won't even touch a bass guitar. The band director at school was also the guy who was giving me guitar lessons. When I was in the 8th grade, he decided that I was a good enough guitar player that I should start playing bass, so they would have a bass player for junior high jazz band. I really felt like I didn't have a say in the whole thing. He called my parents, told them he wanted me to play, and they went to a pawn shop and bought me a crappy used bass that didn't even work the way it should. The volume pot on it didn't work, so if it was on 1, 2, 3 it was so low you couldn't hear it well, then 4, 5, 6 , 7, 8, 9 & 10 ws full blast. I couldn't control the volume. Anyway, I went to school on Monday after getting the bass, the band director gave me a lesson book and told me to be on page 35 by Wednesday--2 days later. I had never even seen bass clef music before, and had to teach myself how to read it, and learn how to play 4 strings instead of 6. Needless to say, it didn't go well. It was a constant battle of wills. I didn't want to play, but I was so afraid of the band director and what he would say or do if I told him I didn't want to play, that I suffered in silence for almost a year. We had one contest that we went to that I remember--it is fried into my brain forever--I will never forget it. I had finally learned one song, a ballad called "Quiet Sunrise" and even learned the solo section that was more difficult. Had it down cold. The other 2 songs I couldn't play, so we had a keyboard bass player play those. I was really pretty proud of the fact that I learned this song, and could play it perfectly. We got to the contest, were up on stage, and my song was the 2nd one out of 3. Everything was going great, didn't miss a beat. Got to the solo section, started getting nervous, but I aced the solo section, and was really relieved. Then I blacked out. Have no clue what I played, and can't remember even hearing the rest of the song after that last note of the solo section. I snapped out of whatever trance I was in on the next to last note of the song. I almost had a heart attack! When I snapped out of it, my eyes were still on the last note of the solo section--the rest of the band were about 24 measures ahead of me at the end of the song. I hit the last note of the song just in time. I WANTED TO DIE! :hairstand At the end of the song, after it was over, I turned around and handed the cord to the keyboard player, so she could plug into the amp, and she was like " don't worry! He didn't notice! It's ok!" I almost fell apart on stage. I had to sit there through the last song, when all I wanted to do was hide. I have no clue what I played, but the band director never did notice it. I don't think I was turned up enough to hear what I was playing, because if he would have heard, and it was wrong, he would have blown a gasket! So after that traumatic experience, I absolutely loathed the bass. He finally figured this out the next year, early on, when after a particularly bad rehearsal, he came up to me after practice and said he would get the regular guitar music out for me to play. After about 3 weeks of playing guitar, he told me in my guitar lesson that I seemed a lot happier, and smiled and laughed more during jazz band. I finally told him I never did want to play, and hated every minute of it, and I loved playing 6 string guitar much better. He never brought it up again. Lesson learned from this? If I really don't want to do something, I say NO! I will not ever make that mistake again of letting myself get talked into something that I absolutely do not want to do. I went on to play in Jazz 1 in high school--6 string guitar. There were 2 jazz bands, Jazz 2 was prep for Jazz 1. I played in Jazz 2 for 1 year, and the guitar player for Jazz 1 decided to play a different instrument, so I got into the band by default my sophomore year. We won every single contest we went to, 1st place in our class everywhere we went, including state competition. That night at state competition, for the first time, I actually felt like I was part of the band, accepted as part of the group. The rhythm section was joking around with each other, and it felt great. When they announced we won, it was the most exhilirating feeling I've ever had. After that year, the band director left, and the jazz band program went down hill. I quit after the next year. But I had one year of time where I actually did pretty well, and felt pretty good. My sophomore year I was on the honor roll all year, and things were going fairly well. I was also president of the FHA chapter. Now mind you, the people who were in FHA at the time were bigger losers than I was, and I was more of a leader around these people, so I got voted in as president. That was pretty cool too. I enjoyed that as well. Ok that was long enough. Another story tomorrow