My first year of band camp, I forgot to pack extra socks. So, I only had one pair of socks for the three days of camp.

That doesn't seem too bad, but the camp that we went to didn't have a professional field. The field we practiced on wasn't even flat. Even worse, there were a lot of muddy puddles on the field, specifically where I had to stand.

The first place I had to go to in a puddle was during our second song, Santana. For this song, we started off in a box-like formation, and then we scattered across the field to form a shape resembling the rays of the sun on the horizon. The trombones started in a diagonal line, and then shifted to the right (my left) to cross with the clarinets and flutes (I didn't pay attention to what shape we made here). 

For the area that I had to stand in, there was a big puddle, and I was standing at the edge of it. This wasn't just any ordinary mud puddle, oh no, this was a mini pond. I was juts standing on the edge, and it was only annoying when we shifted, so I had to march sideways through the puddle. Other than that, it wasn't really a big deal.

We ended off Santana by coming into three lines at the front of the field and then scattering off into a crescent moon formation. This happened to be the exact spot where I had to stand for Santana, but, thankfully, closer to the edge of the puddle. Unfortunately, for the next song, Fly Me to the Moon, we had to do sort of a slow moonwalk to shift the moon diagonally. This path that we marched through crossed right into the middle of this small pond on the field. 

You might call me squeamish, but mind you, I had one pair of socks! I had to peel them off my feet after every practice, and then wear them again to the next so I didn't get blisters on my feet. Luckily, I wore my old tennis shoes that had long been broken in, but then again, those were old for a reason. In middle school, I would pace back and forth singing or thinking aloud when I was bored at lunch or break while hitting/scraping the toe of my shoes against the concrete. That was my fault, but that just meant that not only was I marching in dirty socks for three days, but I also had excess water entering my shoes because of the holes in them.

Fun fact: one of my friends in the section got annoyed with my complaining, so she switched spots with me for the rest of camp. We had to switch back once we got back to school, but that was fine by me.