Have a Nice Trip

     Have you ever had one of those moments where you just can't help feeling completely and utterly stupid and embarrassed? Well, I'm sure you have; I've had some pretty bad ones myself! Well, I thought I would tell you about one, just to get it over with. That way if you ever hear anyone making an "allusion" to past events, then you will understand why I am being made fun of.

     The first embarrassing moment that I'm referring to is my legendary fall in band. You know that quote from Batman?
"Why do we fall, Mr. Wayne? So we can learn to pick ourselves back up!" Well not in my case, my line is more like,
"Why do we fall, Miss Beth? So we can learn how embarrassing it is to fall, and never do it again!" Yeah, my fall wasn't metaphorically, it was literally. Right after our first band competition, Mr. Hendricks made a decision. It was apparent to him that the very last set of the very last movement in our show was very sloppy. So what did he do? He made a completely new set for us! Sure it looked better in the end, but it was a pretty hard set too. Literally, anybody could have pointed me out during that set, even from the stands. It's not hard to spot a very short girl sprinting across the field, carrying an instrument that weighs as much as a baby elephant. Well, sure I might have made it look almost easy for competitions, but the actual learning was the hard part.

     The second to last set was back marching, and most people continued back marching for the last set. For some really stupid reason (and being a complete rookie,) I thought that I had to follow their lead... Even though I was supposed to be going forward, so what did I do? I marched forward, backwards. Do you see where this is going? I trip over everything, even when there is no ice, and even when I'm not carrying a fifty pound instrument. So when I was back marching forwards, something was bound to happen. We had practiced the newly made set probably ten times before my little incident. I was half way running backwards in a forward direction when I completely collapsed. To this day, I can't really explain what happened. One second I was standing tall, the next second I was on my back, flat on the ground. Unfortunately it is impossible to hide a little clumsy mistake when there are practically two hundred kids surrounding you, especially when those directly behind you are obnoxious trombone players that wouldn't miss an opportunity to laugh! Immediately after falling over who-knows-what, I leaped to my feet and ran back to my position (in order not to be trampled.) When at last we finished the set, everyone relaxed; except for me (I was still laughing my head off.) Trying to ignore how embarrassed I felt, I heard people call my name from behind.
"Beth, Beth!" called a chorus of trombone boys,
"Are you okay?!"
Trying not to become any more red that I already was, I turned to face them,
"Uh yeah, my pride is more hurt than myself, thank you very much..."
"Okay, good! Because that was flippin' hilarious!!!" Well as you can imagine, I turned bright crimson, and to avoid further embarrassment, turned face forward to look up at the band director. Needless to say, he was looking down at me from forty feet up in the sky, as if my red face was a lighthouse beacon. He shook his head concernedly at the clumsy girl who was currently failing at turning back to her original color.