So, I didn't get to talk about everything.

Yayz

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At the beginning of the story, I mentioned that I had lost a body part because of the trombone. I wasn't lying; I was tired in class one day, and when David said, "Horns up," I missed the mouthpiece and chipped off the part of my tooth that I had chipped from slipping on ice four years earlier. I was going to include it, but I didn't really want to talk about it - afterwards I had to stay in the band room because jazz band was practicing after school, and I was walking in circles trying not to cry because I felt stupid and that I couldn't do anything right.

I cut out quite a few band things from the story: the UCLA game, the second football game, the rival game, the homecoming pep rally, and the away game.

At the rival game, our football team lost zero to 49, and the people in the bleachers gave up on them at some point and starting cheering for us and our stand war with the opposing band. We won.

At the away game, the opposing band played Band Cheer, so we played it back. Then they played it louder, so we played it again. They also played Uptown Funk, but we hadn't memorized it yet, so we couldn't play that one. We marched to the other side of the field to watch their show, and I overheard a woman saying we were polite to show respect for their band. I didn't really want to cut this out - after the game everyone was talking about how much better the other band marched than we did, but it made me realize that I wasn't jealous at all because I loved the band I was in. However, I just couldn't find a way to put it into words, and it was cut out at last minute.

There are two other band chants, one spelling out the school's name (which is also the city I live in), and the other being the "Jacket Roll," but I was too lazy to explain what we did because most of it isn't even a chant. Either way, the red hot cheer is probably my favorite because reasons (I'm too lazy to explain it).

One sectionals, Zoe went down too far on suicides and cut her lip.

Dylan was also in the locker room when I was trying out the trombone. I was looking for excuses to not play it, and one of them that I found was that the trombone I was playing was very airy. I knew that there was a hole in it because the same thing happened with the tuba (I had a duct tape tuba). Dylan, who was in the back messing with the other trombones, stood up, put his finger over the spit valve, and you could just hear the sound go "bwaaaaAAAAHHHH!" If he hadn't done that, I would not be playing the instrument because I would be so frustrated with it.

The section thinks my laugh is gross because my neck looks weird somehow...

Jessica is danktromboner and Andrea is melophobiaa_ irl. I like it when they spam my comments and nag me about updating. :D I was telling Andrea that I had been writing a story about band, and for some reason I gave her the link and then instantly got embarrassed, especially since she almost instantly texted back "CUTE IM GONNA READ IT RN!" The next day, I was in the locker room before school as usual, and when she came in she was like, "Aw!" hugged me, and called me adorable again. I completely forgot why she was doing this, but when I remembered I attempted to avoid her again. It didn't work, in case you were wondering.

Andrea is not a weeaboo. I beg to differ. She speaks some Japanese phrases and has gotten me into Hunter x Hunter (everyone agrees!!!).

I am also constantly teased by the trombones because I'm tall, white, and skinny, which makes zero sense, because so is Dylan (probably because I'm weird lol).

I did not play trombone in middle school. The "cousin" that got me to play once was my brother's friend named Kevin.

Neither Andrea nor Dylan taught me how to march; that memory actually goes to Brendon. I had not picked up the trombone until the third day of school, and there were a few band practices over the summer that I went to playing the saxophone, so I had been taught to march before. I say I listened, but part of me was just thinking, "I know this," and getting irritated. The trombones did, however, teach me how to march correctly - I guess they let it slide over the summer because it was my first time, but there were a lot of things I missed or forgot that were pretty important that I hadn't known marching with the saxophone.

I have also tried out the flute, but I went with the saxophone instead. Later, the flute section was too big, so she put me on trombone. Why she didn't put me on trumpet is beyond me, but I don't know.

Brendon and Jessica are dating.

Anthony was the person who was teaching me the clarinet. He also happens to be a super senior.

My least favorite cadence is called Shots because the visual is pumping your arms violently to the beat. It's hard to keep in step, awkward, and it hurts.

At the away game, Alen was apparently trying to make me want to switch back to the saxophone because he was giving me a lot of reasons why the saxophone was better. To prove a point - though I am still confused why - he stuck the entire mouthpiece in his mouth. I did the same. Everyone thought it was disgusting, and I was afraid that I would chip my tooth out again if someone bumped against me while I was taking it out.

Andrea doesn't say "play loud" as much anymore (never mind she says it in jazz...and before parades...and...never mind). Now it's mostly "Aw, you're so adorable!"

My relationship with the drum majors has improved a lot. David now treats me like a younger sibling sometimes, and I think Kayla feels better about me now (I hope) because reasons I'm not going to share. But I trust them a lot more than I did at the beginning of the year, and I'm really glad - it's good to be on good terms with your drum majors. I didn't have a good relationship with Rachel either because personal reasons, but we're good now...sort of...

Everyone in the story has fake names. I used a random name generator for most of them, and a lot of them are very close to the real names - for instance, Andrea is Alejandra irl (ugh not one for sharing names but I hope this is okay).

Each person in the section has a detail that I talk about a lot because they do it so much I'm and it's one of my favorite parts about them. Andrea literally calls everything adorable (I apologize if I say this to you, I've started to pick up this habit from her), Dylan likes to make weird faces and comments no matter what mood he's in, and Jessica says whatever's on her mind whenever she wants. I love them all. ❤️

For the most part, I never fully touched up on the male trombones in the story. Don't get me wrong, they're just as important to me as Andrea, Jessica, and Zoe. I also talked to Dylan once about how he's helped me (more briefly than Andrea because I was even more awkward back then) because I really do see him as a big influence music-wise. Caiden has always been a big influence as well, but I didn't really get close to him as a person until after the season ended. Jayden was the same way, but he gave me a lot of really good tips on the trombone when he was in a good mood. He's a bit similar to my older brother - we can get along when he's in a good mood. I didn't see Andrew too much throughout the season, and he didn't talk to me much, so I don't have too many stories of him, but he is a great person and I like him.

The title of the story originates from quite a few ideas, the most obvious being the second song in the sequence that we played for parades. This was the first idea for the title - I was taking a personality quiz before writing and the results were all names of songs, so I thought I'd be cool to make the title a song title. Second, it is kind of a symbol of how close I am to the trombones - you know I love something when I remember all of the inside jokes. All in all, I wanted to name it after a song that meant something to me. Dylan made me laugh just by saying it, the lyrics relate to my experience in band and learning the trombone, it was one of the songs that I was really trying to learn when I first started out...

Three other options to the title were Incantation, Fly Me to the Moon, and Don't Stop Believing. While Don't Stop Believing was a very good choice and possibly a more important song to the story, 25 or 6 to 4 was the one that clicked because it was the more difficult song that took more effort to learn, which perfectly fit the theme of the story.

I shared my testimony during a fast and testimony meeting, not during mutual. Shockingly, although my mind has been terribly trashed thanks to the band kids' big potty mouths, my testimony has been strengthen in so many ways because of them - specifically of just how much I am loved by not only other people but also my Heavenly Father because I had been praying for so long and had stayed up at night so much crying for me to be able to practice, for the motivation to play, the confidence and the ability to find some improvement, the courage to tell my mom I wanted to play something else, or for someone to let me know for once in my life that I was wanted. I got all of the above and more, and it is such a miracle that it happened when I needed it most.

I missed one detail about the uniform that I was really planning on including: chocking. So, the collar of the jacket is pretty stiff, so to keep it up, one end of the collar has this sort of hook while the other end has a link. We call this "chocking" for some reason, and it's funny when I talk about it with my non-band friends and they look at me like an insane person. This bugs me all the time because there are quite a few jackets that never stay chocked, like Jessica's and Andrea's.

I never expected this story to finish so fast, or even to finish in general. This was a story that I had received quite a few requests to write, and for fear of not having a plot, this story was originally meant to be paranormal. Each instrument had a special ability, a special power, and the ability to see viruses; the thing that they fought off during football games so they wouldn't attack the players. It was really weird to write about, and after seven chapters of only mentioning it twice, a lot of people still seemed to enjoy it, so I revised the few parts that were closely related to the original idea and reverted the genre to Teen Fiction. One part that I still have not revised is in the third chapter when I am marching with the band for the first time and I am talking about how the chanting which foot to step was a "beacon," and I was supposed to tie that in, but I forgot about it and never did, so now it's just a useless metaphor explaining something extremely insignificant.

I briefly mentioned the group costume for the halloween party. Every section has a group costume (unless they don't do it) and we have a costume contest by section. We couldn't agree on a costume, so we were all bagels. This is another inside joke - Dylan is always wearing tan shorts or jeans and either a band shirt or a gray shirt, so we call him a bagel. So, we all wore gray shirts (or a band shirt if we didn't have one) for our costume. We didn't win the contest because everyone had to ask what we were, but it was fun. In the picture we took, Andrea, Zoe, and Jessica "booped"each other (he just likes to place his palm briefly onto our heads and say "boop" for some reason) and Jayden and I whipped like Dylan does (it's weird). We did, however, win the pumpkin decorating contest; our pumpkin was white and we made it bloody and such but it was still adorable. We also played musical chairs for some reason with one person from each section. The first round, the people that came out was in the order of the instruments I quit (clarinet, then color guard, then tuba, etc) until the last two people - Andrea lost to the saxophones. But it all worked out in the end because I played the next round and won. I think the last person I beat was a flute, a clarinet, or guard.

If I were to pick one song that was important to this story, it would be Runaway Baby. I only briefly mentioned this song for sake of time, but this song is still very special to me because it was the first complicated song that I learned and memorized on my own. This was a huge achievement for me, and though it is not entirely true, if you were to ask me what the first song I learned on my own was, my answer would be Runaway Baby.

I used a random name generator for most of these names. There is a guy who got someone's real name, so as a joke, I gave that guy the other guy's name. I kept mixing the two of them up for the rest of the year.

In "I'm Not Adorable," I talk about how Andrea helps me through Give Me Everything. This experience was a little different. This actually happened during the concert season before Thanksgiving break. We did have a guy come in and help us, but at this time we were just holding a regular sectional. I was struggling a lot with Emblem of Unity, a song that we were playing for the winter concert that year.