this one time?......

So yeah, I really DID do band camp one summer. Except it wasn't technically BAND camp. I was a flag girl in our high school marching band, so I actually did FLAG camp, which is probably a lot like band camp, but way cooler.

The band director signed four of us guinea pigs up for this camp in the big city. The idea being that we four would bring back our new flag camp skillz and disperse them to the rest of the team. A first for the band, a first for us.

There were two total rookies. Nice girls who could not keep a beat to save their lives. The other girl - whom I will call Nancy, since that's her name - and I were not close friends, but friends enough. Looking back, we were probably only friends since we were on the flag team together. Other than that, she actually kinda got on my nerves.

I figured the two hapless rookies would go off with their group, and that Nancy and I would go off with the more experienced group and that would be our Flag Camp. On the trip up I learned that Nancy would be with the Intermediate flags and that I would be with the Advanced.

Advanced? What was this "Advanced"? This news left me feeling honored and queasy at the same time.

We were just a little sex-change town high school marching band. There I was on my way to the big city to be twirling flags with these big-city-marching-band-advanced flag girls. Four days of humiliation.

But ya know? It wasn't that bad. Our instructor was this fun and dynamic flag chick with the Blue Devils drum and bugle corps - whoever that is. And I learned that I could throw down with the best of them. Plus, I didn't have to hang out with Nancy all day.

But one of my main memories of flag camp - the thing that has me remembering that it was four days long - was the separation between my then-boyfriend and me.

In the days leading up to my departure for camp, he would stare off into space and monotonely mourn, "four days.... four.... four days....."

Ah yes, the dysfunction of adolescent codependence. By the time I'd embarked on the journey to big city flag camp, the boyfriend had also worked me into a mournful stupor, wondering how I would survive a whopping four days without him.

So my days were spent with hours of drills and routines from the commander from the Blue Devils. Evenings were spent on the phone in the phone booth in our dorm with the boyfriend. I did manage to do a bit of socializing in those free time hours, or go on adventures with my podunk-town cohorts with the band director. He'd take us to adventurous places we didn't have at home - like malls and stuff.

But mostly I remember the phone booth.

Oh, and I got a t-shirt.
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