I made a commitment to be here
Obligatory on mobile, I was trying to fall asleep last night and remembered this story
When I was in high school, I was a band kid. This story takes place my sophomore year.
For some context, my high schools merged at the end of my freshman year. At the beginning of the new school year, we had a new director. I’ll name him Mr. <PERSON>. Mr. <PERSON> came from a district before us that was a little higher scale, more money in the budget type beat. He came to our inner city school district because they offered him more money (or so I heard). We were an inner city school with about 110 kids in the band, all of which had beef with him because the directors from the previous high schools were beloved and had been in their positions over a decade.
Mr. <PERSON> tried really hard to assert himself as a person of authority. But, as 2015 happened to be the height of DEEZ NUTS and other jokes, he wasn’t making it far. He drilled into us that we had a commitment to the band to entertain. We were athletes (which is true, I did get my varsity letter in band), we were there to entertain. 119
We needed to commit to the band. Football players and cheerleaders could not join the band because of the schedules, you had to be committed to the band.
So one day, in early September as the weather changed in the Midwest, I got sick. Like, really sick. I had a fever of 101.5. The day before at practice, Mr. <PERSON> went in on us being committed to the band and memorizing our music and yada yada. Cue malicious compliance.
So, after careful thought, I went to band even though I missed school. I went to his office before he blew the whistle and let him know that I had a fever and was feeling sick, and if I fell out of formation that would be why. He looked me up and down and went “if you’re sick then why did you come to practice?” I looked him back dead in the eye and went “I made a commitment to be here”. He looked at our assistant director and she just shrugged.
That day during practice, about 15 of us fell out during rehearsal on the field. A bunch of us had gotten sick after being in such close quarters for so long. He stopped with the commitment bit after that. He’s still the director at the school, he’s lightened up on the kids quite a bit, and the band has sounded the best it has in a very long time. 406