It's a lie, I never went to band camp. But I was in the band.
In my town, band started in the second grade. My sister had played in the band a couple years before me, so when I hit second grade, I wanted to join as well. She had already quit, so it was decided I would just use the instrument she had previously played, the clarinet. I blame my parents for not thinking before hand how this would affect their little boy for the next several years.
Now, there's nothing wrong with a boy playing the clarinet, or the flute, or anything else associated with girls. I can say that now, because I'm older. Try telling the other kids in elementary school. Try pointing out some famous male clarinetists. I'll wait. Couldn't think of any? Me neither.
I'm a father now, to a boy and a girl. We have tried, with little success, to avoid gender stereotypes, and let our kids play with whatever they like, wear what they like, and do what they like. My son wanted a doll, he got a doll. But if he told me that he wanted to join the band, I would not make him play the clarinet, just because we had one in the closet. I would try to save him from a life of torment, sitting with the trombones behind him, blowing the spit from the spit valves onto his shirt. That's hilarious, tromboners, real funny. Behind them are the trumpeters, and the saxophonies, and the drummers, the real men of the band.
It's funny that even in a society of the downtrodden and the oft-mocked, there's still a hierarchy of who the worst of the worst are. But no matter how bad it got, I thanked God every day that my sister didn't play the piccolo.
