Synthesis 004: Souderton

I went to Souderton, I think, three but possibly four of the seasons that I did drumline. I remember the first year, it was one of the first competitions, and it seemed impossibly far away. We spent the entire day there and we were all exhausted. I think that was the time that I pretty much fell asleep next to Sarah Cory on the bus and that started the joke about me "sleeping with" all the girls in the drumline. This was my freshman year, when our show was The Devil Went Down to Georgia, and we lost every single competition we went to. I remember what the school looked like - for some reason, I have an image of it in my head as very thin but very long. I know this can't possibly be the case but that's how I remember Souderton. I also remember when I was sitting and watching other drumlines perform, one of the snare drummers from Souderton started talking to me. He was really nice, but I couldn't remember his name, even though it wasn't strange at all, probably something like Kevin. He was a senior, white guy, with short brown hair, not too tall but not very small either.

We went back to Souderton the next year with Synthesis. I think it was a little bit later in the season this time. I remember that entire competition day it was raining furiously. For some reason, both unloading and loading the bus occured at night in my memory. I guess it was just really gray... although I guess if I think about it hard enough I can remember moving in during the light now. I knew we were there because I saw a school that I thought looked really long.

So like I said, it was really really raining that day. Like, extremely, extremely rainy. My hair was soaking wet by the time we were done moving in. I don't know how we got the instruments off the bus, but it must have been in a wild rush and an absolute mess. Gina's synthesizer, I think, was taken inside the nearest door we could find even though it wasn't the one we were supposed to go in through. We never plugged her synth in like we were supposed to - we just had her hook up to a car battery. We were really afraid of that battery getting wet, and I remember we wrapped it in a trash bag and booked it indoors as soon as we got it off the bus.

I remember walking down the long thin part of the school after loading towards the unit's room sometime that day. My hair was absolutely soaked. There were two girls walking in the opposite direction down the hallway, and one of them held up a camera and flashed a picture of me and then said "Thank you!" and laughed with her friend and walked away. I didn't know whether to be flattered or embarrassed. I forgot what they looked like two seconds later so there was no way I could find them again to ask.

The snare drummer that had talked to me last year had become an instructor for the Souderton drumline. I remember they called themselves the Mirage indoor drumline, and we were jealous of their super cool name [at least, we had been when we were just the Garnet Valley drumline].

The competition ended and we were all standing outside just before the bus, waiting to go home. I can't remember if it was still raining at that point, but I'm going to assume that it wasn't if we all decided to wait outside. I suppose I was pretty good friends with Marc and Brian at that point. One of them jumped on top of the other, and then someone shouted "boy pile!" and I jumped on top of them, too. So one of them was holding the other as well as myself on their back. I'm pretty sure Viv has pictures of me doing that, sticking my tongue out, on top of a boy pile with Marc and Brian in the dark outside of Souderton.

Peace out.