Why Would Lionel Richie Want My Frito Pie?

              Now that Fall is back, my thoughts have naturally turned to an activity as much a part of me as the argyle sweater I asked for at Christmas (age 14) and finally, finally (Hallelujah!) received for my 15^th birthday.  That activity is MARCHING BAND, y’all.  I was a big ol’ band nerd from fifth grade through my sophomore year in college.  A trumpeter with a fair amount of talent, I was often chosen to play solos on the field.  I don’t say that to brag, I say that to set up a story about my band experiences that wouldn’t have been as interesting had I simply blended into the formations that changed every two weeks at my small, country high school in the Red River Valley of Texas.

                I had played in concert band for the previous four years but had never participated in marching band as you had to be in high school to do so, at least in that particular school –Rivercrest.  I had no frame of reference for marching bands other than my mother was a clarinet player in the Mississippi College marching band in 1963 and that was the reason she was in Mexico City (for the Fiesta Bowl) when JFK was assassinated.  She never shared any other specifics.  After being a member of the Rivercrest Rebel Marching Band for two years under the tutelage of Claire Jesse, my frame of reference was skewed to something I have still never experienced or even heard about.

                Mrs. Jesse created and taught us a different halftime show every two weeks.  Yes, you read that correctly.  We learned new songs and new marching formations for every home game and the subsequent away game.  We were not required to memorize the music, obviously, as we were taxing our brains to remember the very specific choreography that had to be exact, so the show would work as we only had like 35 members. There’s not a whole lot of designs you can make with that few people, a Blue Moon being one of the ones I remember.  Anything more complex than a circle or square would be interpreted as “People Randomly on a Field…in Big Hats…with Feathers”.  Minimalism doesn’t begin to describe it.  On top of that, we had to learn new songs for the pre-game ceremony at Homecoming.

                One of the upsides of being a talented trumpeter is getting to play a solo.  Trumpets are the coolest people in band, on par with the drum section, if you don’t count the bass drums or cymbals, no offense.  In the Fall of 1984, I was selected to play the solo at the pre-game Homecoming ceremonies.  The song was the timeless tune, Lionel Ritchie’s Truly.  If you’ve never played that melody on a trumpet, let me tell you it isn’t necessarily a difficult piece of music if you were to play it once.  However, repetitious playing can be taxing as there are very high notes which require you to tighten your lips on the mouthpiece to play them properly and I was going to excel at whatever I was doing.  For those who don’t remember, Homecoming 1984 was held on a very wet and extremely muddy football field.  It seemed like it had rained the previous 40 days and nights.  I promise you there were animals lined up in pairs in the parking lot of the football stadium, looking for an ark, people. 

                Cut to me standing in the same spot on the field to the left of the Homecoming Court who were walking very slowly on sunken red carpet, holding the skirts of their Scarlet O’Hara meets Barbie Birthday Cake formal gowns out of the mud, one of them wearing football cleats and another wearing cowboy boots, so as not to get, literally, stuck in the mud.  Because their walk across the field took about four times longer than we had practiced, I was forced to play a beautiful but difficult song four times as many times as I had planned.  It seemed like 64 times, but it was probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 times. 

                Anyone who has played a trumpet knows that your lips get tired after playing for a long time and you have to give them a rest.  Don’t say a word; it’s too easy.  I was used to tired lips (again, too easy) but this time when I finished, my lips wouldn’t work at all.  I literally could not form words; I could only make weird sounds. Imagine Charlie Brown’s teachers or a very sad Chewbacca. 

This shouldn’t have been a problem as most people who sat near me in the football stands would have loved to have a break from the wonder that are my stream-of-consciousness conversations, ranging from my unending need for a Frito Pie to my secretly coveting (but outwardly mocking) a certain band member (let’s just call her Jathy Cones) whose mother brought her iced tea in a mason jar. 

One thing I wasn’t aware was happening during my extended remix of a solo was that I was slowly sinking into the mud.  So much so, that when I turned to leave the field, my shoes got stuck and when I jerked my legs to remove them from the muck, my natural athleticism took over and I accidentally pulled both my feet out of my shoes, leaving the double-tied Kaepas peeking out of what was supposed to have been grass but was stock-show level muck, y’all.

As I was on the field, not the sidelines, I had to somehow get my shoes.  I didn’t want us to get a penalty and/or someone to trip over them causing us to lose the game and making me the local preppy non grata.   When I went back to get them, I was forced to get out of the way of my bandmates who were leaving the field behind me in a big hurry, as the pre-game had spilled over into the game time and we were in violation of something; I don’t remember what.  I played football not even half-heartedly (eighth-heartedly, maybe?  I mean I showed up to the games and that counts for something, right?) for two years but remember only that I hated it and every move I made was the wrong move.

One of the more observant cheerleaders saw I was trying to get something off the field and ran over to help (let’s call her Jonna Do Javis) as she was also a very kind person, with a heretofore unknown wicked streak.  She saw my shoes sticking out of the mud and extricated them in the nick of time.  I was thrilled that she had them.  Now I just needed to get them from her.  I smiled and motioned to her in a very subdued manner, like a Baptist sneaking a second helping at a potluck, to get her attention.  She smiled and waved the shoes at me and not in a subdued manner; more like a Pentecostal moved by The Spirit.  I don’t know if I knew where she went to church, but I’m sure in retrospect she had to have been back-slidden because what she did was downright Unchristian.

Jonna Do Javis held my shoes high in the air, like a trophy and walked slowly to the middle of the track surrounding the muddy field directly in front of the Homecoming Court and all the people in the stands.  I know you’re thinking ‘how many people could that possibly be in a tiny town?’  Well, it was Homecoming, so it was literally everyone who lived within a 20-mile radius, except the housebound or the infirm.  This was THE event of the Fall, on par with the Rodeo in the Summer, y’all.  I might as well have posted the video on YouTube.  Football games were the Facebook of the 1980s in the South.  The Dad even went to them and he left the house about as often as the Pope watches Pay-Per-View Wrestling. 

Once she made it to the spot she felt was most advantageous to maximum embarrassment, she wiggled the dirty shoes at me.  I tried to motion her over to keep from being publicly humiliated again (lest we not forget the time I accidentally tackled the opposing football team’s bench, but not any of their players and injured myself but no one else in the process).  I just wanted to go sit down and eat my Frito Pie once my lips started working again.  But no.  Jonna Do was not having it.  She thought it was hilarious to make me walk (muddy) sock-footed to get the shoes from her hands, in full view of the throng and I mean throng, y’all, for real.

If my lips had been working I would have given her the business but alas ‘twas not to be.  And I wasn’t the type to exact revenge on anyone, especially to the person who was the closest we had to Snow White in our school.  She literally had woodland creatures follow her around school.  Or maybe those were just the taxidermized specimens in the biology classroom.  Or maybe I’m misremembering her interrupting my speech on Koala Bears when I brought my stuffed animal as part of my presentation.  When she interrupted, my teacher didn’t stop the timer and she helped me get past the five-minute requirement from Mr. Lum, our teacher, saving my under-prepared butt and keeping my A+ average intact.  I was normally a conscientious student, but the night before the report was due, The Dad came home with a VCR he had bought from the trunk of a guy’s car in the parking lot of The Wal-Mart and somebody (I won’t say who) decided to watch Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles, four or five times.

I can’t believe I had forgotten about that almost-debacle.  Jonna Do, the saintly Disney Princess helped me maintain my academic reputation.  And here I had nursed a (relatively small) grudge all these years.  I apologize Jonna Do.  Mea Culpa.  Mea Culpa, indeed. 

Patriotism and Partial Nudity

             As a young man I excelled at managing the resources of others.  My downfall seemed to be my inability to manage my own.  As an adult I have definitely sharpened my skills; however, some lessons were hard to come by.  I would love to tell you that I was one of the noble poor, those who possess the gift of delayed gratification; those who, when given resources, use them wisely.  Full disclosure, I was of the less than noble poor; those who want so desperately to have things that when given access to anything, use them as if they were commonplace.  I considered my lack of royal birth as ample delay in any sort of gratification.  I say this to give the backstory for a time when I was publicly humiliated by a fashion choice made without good use of limited funds.  I am referring to the incident at Opryland, bastion of family values, overpriced soda and country music. 
                I was a trumpeter in the band from fifth grade until my sophomore year in college.  A band nerd to be sure; however, trumpet players are the studs of the band, if you will.  It is the only time I thought I was a stud; let me have this one, people.  Our high school band (Tylertown, MS) was an exceptionally talented group of people and we had been invited to compete in the Strawberry Festival and Parade in Humboldt, Tennessee.  In order pay for this trip we had to panhandle.  And by that I mean sell magazine subscriptions and candy bars to the townspeople or county folks as Tylertown was the only town in the county.  Each member had to sell a specific amount to pay for their trip and any money earned above that was returned to them for spending money on said trip.  I was a ‘champeen’ seller and paid for my trip plus received a refund in the triple digits so I was stoked, do you hear me?
                My parents had put back some money assuming, I imagine, that I would eat more Snickers than I sold.  When I told her of my bounty, my mother informed me that I could use those funds to buy a new outfit or two depending on the cost.  I was even more stoked; new clothes and a new place to wear them.  Look out Humboldt!
                If I were giving my 1987-self some advice, I would have said to buy khaki shorts and 2-3 polo style shirts to have more options and, seemingly, more clothes; good solid wardrobe staples.  Unfortunately the 16 year-old Dusty was all about a trend and poor choices were made, both in the immediacy and in retrospect.  My poor mother tried her best to nudge me in the right path, but what I chose I was amazing, y’all.  One outfit was purple, orange and black jam shorts with an orange scrub-style top.  Yes, like nurses wear.  It was a ‘thing’ back then in Southwest Mississippi.  The other outfit was a shorts and top set (don’t judge me) that was white with little light blue, pink and red nautical flags scattered both port and starboard. 
                So, fast forward to the really long bus trip where I don’t remember who I sat beside, I do recall that Angela Hall reclined her seat into my space.  Of course I said nothing as I am too polite and she could have easily bested me at fisticuffs, were they to ensue.  We arrived, competed in the marching festival, lost the grand prize by one-half a point and headed to Opryland to get as crazy as you can get at a family-oriented theme park with eleventy-seven chaperones and a band director who was suspicious of you because of your “smart mouth”.  Of course, in those days ‘crazy’ to me meant eating two corn dogs and not feeling guilty.  I was not a wild child, people.  All the insanity came in one 18-month period when I was 25ish.
                Feeling all nautical, I had decided to christen Opryland in my white outfit.  I was standing near one of the rides chatting with my peeps, as I do not ride rides lest I barf in public, when a strange girl (and I mean strange in the sense that I didn’t know her, not due to any outward abnormalities) walked up behind me and said, “Nice underwear.”  Before I could stop myself I said, “Thanks” because I will take any compliment offered.  When I looked down to see why she would have mentioned my unmentionables, I noticed for the first time that day that you could, in fact, see the light blue tightie-whities (tightie-bluies?) I was wearing.  How no one in my group had noticed or pointed out the fact that you could see right through my ensemble I do not know.  I realize that my body does not inspire anyone to compose poetry or take chisel to stone but c’mon, these were supposed to be my friends; my fellow band nerds.  In response, I did the only honorable thing which was hastily untuck my shirt, flee the scene to seek solace in yet another corn dog and pray for sweet death to take me.
                Although I sweated enough for 17 people in the summer heat, I did not perish beneath the awning of the corn dog stand.  One of my roommates did, however, lend me his Walkman and cassette single of Shirley Murdock’s “As We Lay” to ease my humiliation.  These items had been purchased the day before at Sam Goody because Clark Sauls was rich, y’all; richer than me, at least.  Side note, Mr. Sauls was also the best-dressed boy at my school.  He had actually bought not just a cassette single but two additional entire cassettes!  I had to tape songs from the radio to have anything to listen to in my mother’s car and that was only while using the 8-track/cassette adapter we bought at the truck stop on double-clearance sale because nobody had a car old enough to still have an 8-track tape player except somebody's Pee-paw and apparently he already had one.
             The next day, we visited the Opryland Hotel and I was determined to not only mitigate the exposure from the previous day, but to ensure mass amnesia.  I didn’t know how, but “Entertainment Dusty” was going to need to make an appearance.  Entertainment Dusty was my alter-ego who did a one-man show whenever he needed to feel loved, was caught in an embarrassing situation, felt uncomfortable, felt at a disadvantage socially or simply wanted to hear someone laugh.  Generating laughter is my super power and something that makes me smile on the inside.
             We were trying to figure out how to enjoy hanging out in a hotel where we weren’t actually staying and I decided to give a tour as I suddenly remembered tour guides walk backwards.  This would solve the problem of possible exposure if, for some strange reason, my orange, purple and black jam shorts somehow became see-through.  Having never been to the Opryland Hotel, but very skilled at simply making things up on the fly, I started to point out the many details of the hotel’s décor. 
                “And we’re walking, we’re walking, please note the lovely mural to your right.  It was not painted here, unlike most murals.  It was actually imported from Uruguay and Canada at the same time, by the same artist.  Yes, that’s unusual and no, I don’t know why.  What can I say, artists are finicky.  And we’re walking, we’re walking, also note the decorative sconces that are supposed to invoke a sense of patriotism through their intricate curlicues.  They were imported all the way from Dunwoody, Georgia.  Imported means ‘not from here’.  Georgia is not Tennessee.  And we’re walking.” 
                After a half-hour or so, we came to a ballroom and I got distracted watching the staff decorate for a function.  Suddenly an elderly voice said, “Is the tour over?”  It was only then that I noticed there were 8-10 older people walking along at the back of our group who had mistaken me for an actual tour guide.  So I did what any self-respecting fake tour guide would do; I finished the tour and dropped them off in the lobby just in time to catch their bus.  I can’t disappoint my public, can I?
                And that is all I’m saying for now.