eight-to-fives

August 12, 2001, 11:59 pm

I was in E'town and came home late after visiting with a friend. I walked down the driveway humming a bassline to myself (a song from the Jet Set Radio soundtrack (yes, a Dreamcast game, it's excellent)). I had a lot of crap on my mind and didn't feel very tired, so I thought I'd go for a little walk around the block. I walked up Elizabeth Street and then up Churchill Court, walked past some house that smelled like Neal Vickery's basement. I kept walking, though the fields behind the Pizza Hut, towards the Big-Ass Church and the E'town High School Softball Field. I kept walking, past the High School and got disturbed when I glanced through the window and saw a Soda Machine in a place where there had previously been only wall.

Then I walked over to the band practice field, which is really just a parking lot. I walked around aimlessly, looking at the spray painted numbers everywhere. Found a wet, rolled-up drillchart and smiled. Marched some eight-to-fives (if you know what I'm talking about, you're a nerd).

I was about to leave when I stopped involuntarily. There was something I had to see, but I couldn't remember what it was. I turned around and started walking towards the school again, when it hit me.

I walked over to the side of the Gymnasium entrance and was shocked when I found a piece of gum, still stuck to the wall where I'd put it in the Fall of 1994.

That was the first year I was section leader of the drumline. I was only a freshman and there were several older guys who really didn't like that I was section leader, so I was constantly trying to "assert power" over them (or whatever).

It was an early Friday morning; the band was preparing to go on another weekend trip to some contest (they all run together after so many years) and the guys in the drumline were all thinking about the dumb things they were going to do in the hotel or making out with their girlfriends on the bus, instead of thinking about playing their drums. So I took out the piece of Wrigley's Spearmint Gum that I'd been chewing and stuck it to the brick wall which we were all facing. I told them that we'd all look at the piece of gum or we'd run laps or do pushups or something equally dumb.

I can't remember if it worked (it probably didn't, I wasn't a very good section leader :). But it creeps me out that my gum has been on that wall for almost seven years.