The band room

As I walk into the band room, the all too familiar smell hits me.  I can't quite explain exactly what the smell is, most likely because it is a compilation of many, many smells.  This smell usually appears half way through the season which is July to October.  It is a mixture of dirty socks, moldy notebooks from all the practices out in the rain, old water bottles left behind, among many other things.  The smell never seems to go away no matter how much you spray or attempt to freshen it up.  It just comes in different intensities.  At the beginning of the season it appears to be dormant, but really it's just not a prominent.  Once it has become strong enough to recognize, it doesn't go away until bout mid January after the room has been thoroughly cleaned over winter break.

In addition to the smells of the band room, another thing you would notice almost immediately is what looks like an explosion of clothing all over.  People seem to constantly leave articles of clothing in the band room, never seeming to remember to get them the next day.  They just sit there and gather with the other lost and never found clothes.  This ranges from socks to shirts to nice dress shoes.  I don't understand how people can forget these and not know it, but they never seem to go away and it happens every year.  The piles just move around the room in an attempt to "clean up" the room.

Depending on when you enter the room, the sound can be overwhelming.  When all two-hundred-some students are in the band room, the sound is almost deafening, and this is when they are simply talking and carrying on conversations.  When we all start playing, the sound is amplified by at least one hundred percent.  It is not possible to carry on any form of conversation while the band is playing, you must simply wait until we are done.