Fate's Practical Joke

Fate has a sense of humor.  It doesn’t normally target me for its practical jokes; after all, I’m only a regular girl who grew up in a small town.  But my senior year of high school fate went out of its way to torment me and the rest of the members of the high school band.

    I went to Melba High School; it was a tiny little school in the middle of Hicksville, Idaho.  That wasn’t the real name for the town, actually, it was Melba, just like the school; Hicksville is just a better fit. The town, with a stunning population of 500, was actually smaller than the school.  It was so small in fact that a pen-pal once sent me a letter addressed to Shannon Johnston, Melba, ID and it arrived with no trouble whatsoever.  Technically, once you got more than four miles outside of the miniscule two-block assortment of the post office, school, two bars, five churches, and the American Legion, you were no longer in Melba, but out in the middle of vast farmland that seemed to lay outside the jurisdiction of any town.

    The town had started in the early 1900s as a spur on the railroad.  By the time I was born, Melba which had never exactly boomed, was shrinking into nothingness.  The buildings were falling down, the roads were like washboards, and the town’s six stop-signs were riddled with bullet holes and nearly unreadable. It seemed to have been forgotten in the crazy technology race of the rest of America.  Sure, we had cars, but most were at least twenty years out of date and the paint had faded so much that their colors were now indecipherable.  We had all the other modern conveniences like electricity and running water, but most people still kept their outhouses and lanterns.  I suppose it is unfair for me to make Melba appear so backwards that the people still use outhouses; most of the outhouses were actually unused and had been built for the sole purpose of the 4th of July outhouse races.  Don’t ask.

    Melba high school never lacked in students; it was the only school around for miles. But it did lack in students who were willing to participate in anything that wasn’t a sport. As a result, it had a struggling music department.  We changed music teachers nearly every year and never had much luck with any of them.  Mr. Priest had a horrible temper, ran the band like a drill sergeant, and kept a shotgun in his office until the principal made him take it home.  Mrs. Schneider cried on a regular basis and knew less about music than most of her students. Mr. Allsberry, the one we had my senior year, was pulled over one morning on his way to school for speeding and then arrested for mouthing off to the cop.

    Needless to say, being involved in the music department was not a high priority for most of the students; they tried to avoid it at all costs. Only the brave (like James who regularly walked four miles home when he missed the bus), the crazy (like Megan who shared her bedroom with 22 cats), and Peter ever joined the music department.  Peter was the foreign exchange student who, first of all was unlucky enough to end up in Melba of all places, and secondly had no idea what he was getting into when he signed up for band. The choir was literally nonexistent and the band had only nine members in it. Actually we had six members, two slackers, and a non-musician who only joined because she had a crush on the teacher.  I guess some girls like older men with jail records.

    Anyway, despite the size of the band, we had spirit.  We combined with the middle school to create a gigantic thirty member pep-band for every home football game. That usually meant the 6 high schoolers and a handful of decent middle schoolers made music while the other half made noise.  More than once I had to elbow a specific trumpet player in the ribs because he seemed to think that playing random notes along with the melody was an acceptable way to perform.  

    Because we had such school spirit the other five high schoolers and I thought it would be a great idea to spell out “M-E-L-B-A-!” on our backs with duct tape, one letter to a back.  The silver duct tape really stood out against the brilliant red of our shirts so we were bound to attract attention.  I liked the idea of being in the middle so I chose “L,” but I soon learned of my mistake when shouts of “Loooooooser!” followed me around the football games.  I’d have burned the shirt had I known how much trouble that “L” would cause for me in the future, but after the first two games the temperatures dropped and soon it became so cold our shirts had to be covered with jackets and coats.  I settled for thinking that the letters would never see the light of day again.  I was wrong of course, fate was using that “L” to taunt me and it wasn’t about to let the
joke drop yet.

    The season progressed quite normally. The school buses were late to school each morning due to being caught behind farmers’ tractors, or held up behind flocks of sheep being driven down the road to winter pastures. All the corn, wheat, onions, and barley grew tall, were harvested, and were sent off to be processed.  Like any other year and despite the reputation of my state, Melba didn’t really grow many potatoes.

    The football season went by normally too.  The team lost most of their games, the stadium lights burned out one by one, the temperatures got so low our instruments would stop working between songs, and I kept getting accused of smoking.  I played the French horn that year and in order to keep it working between songs I would keep the mouthpiece in my mouth where it was warm; at a quick glance it always looked like I had a cigarette dangling from my lips, especially when it was so cold my breath formed little misty water droplets in the air.  

    The season was exactly like any other season until the very end.  Somehow the football team beat the leading team in the district and went from last place to first place in one game. Then they continued their winning streak through regionals and ended up taking home the state trophy.   Nobody knew what happened.  The coach, this being his first year coaching, decided to retire with an undefeated state championship record.

    However, the players were gracious winners.  At the end of the football season there was a huge assembly (all 200 members of the student body!) to honor the football team and everyone who helped them along the way; that even included the usually ignored pep-band.

    The members of the pep-band and I were rather touched that we had been acknowledged.  However, since this was purely a high school function, the middle schoolers weren’t around and we were happy about that too.  We decided that we would wear our “M-E-L-B-A-!” shirts for such a special occasion.

    This is where fate decided to step in and play its practical joke on us.  The day of the assembly our “B” was home sick.  But it didn’t matter; we wouldn’t have been able to be honored in our “M-E-L-B-A-!” order anyway. Our names were going to be called in a specific order and that was how we were supposed to enter the gym. The order was pretty much random; Mr. Allsberry just wrote our names down in the order he happened to look up and see us milling around the room.  This had to be done in advance to make sure the announcer could practice the name and be able to pronounce them correctly.  Most of us were lucky enough to have names the average kindergartner could pronounce; however, our saxophone player, Anna Schwisow, wasn’t quite so lucky.  You’d think that after she spent 13 years in Melba the faculty would learn to pronounce her last name, but that wasn’t the case.  

    It wasn’t until just before the assembly when we were lined up in the hall a few seconds away from parading in front of the student body when I realized the malicious practical joke.  I, the person at the beginning of the line, was about to lead the members of my band into a cruel trick and didn’t even have time to stop it.  My name was called and one of the teachers pushed me through the door into the gym.  One by one I was joined by the rest of the band members (Anna Schwisow’s last name was mispronounced again) until we were all standing in a row.  There we stood in front of the student body, huge letters adorning our backs, spelling out “L-A-M-E-!”