Of Bears and Penguins

I had an 8 am class that day - piano lab in Tate Hall.

It would be easy to write that when I got back to the dorm that day, the world had changed - and it had, but I didn't know it when I got back at 9 a.m.

In fact, no one did.

The classes had not been cancelled yet. I went to Music Theory in the Fine Arts Building, and still we did not know, we went on studying chords, and listening to their different variations, we considered the relative minor.

We left class to find a silent campus tuned in to CNN. There were no more classes that day.

I cannot remember the name of the girl in my dorm who told me about it. I can't remember who I ate lunch with, or what I did that afternoon.

At 4:30, a kid named Justin picked me up to go to Marching Mizzou. Dr. Shallert had not cancelled our two hour practice.

We were 280 youth strong. We were pissed off that our director had called us together - it seemed heartless to practice, marching band was totally unimportant. There was none of the levity that usually accompanied us - no piling on top of a band member in a rugby heap of a tradition called stacking. No barking of upperclassmen at younger ones. Just our feet marking time, the click of our instruments, the fury of the notes we directed at our director in the viewing stand. And when we paused, sometimes we grumbled nasty words at him, but mostly we were silent.

I remember that it was warm that day, that the sun was bright, and reflected off the pavement of our practice field. We must have practiced the pre-game show, and that means we must have played the national anthem. But I do not remember.

What I remember most that day, though, was what Dr. Shallert said at the end of our practice.

He said that he knew it seemed absurd to come out to field that day. That it seemed cruel, and mean. He did not try to help us understand what had happened, he offered no trite cliche.

He said that it was better to come out for 2 hours, to play the memorized songs, to focus on the steps we knew, to be together with one another than for all of us to sit glued to the TV as we had all day. He said it was important that we had been together, to create something in the midst of that terrible day.

And he was right. He was wise, and he led us well that day.

As I recall, the football game was cancelled that weekend. But I do remember that we as band approached the practicing of the National Anthem with a renewed vigor.

And when we played it the first time on Faurot Field in front of the crowd after that terrible day, the notes shimmered in the air. We had never stood so stiffly at attention, we were determined to play the song as it had never been so well played. It seemed the only thing to do.

When the song was done, I know the whistle blew, and we fell into the next formation. We kept moving, but we had played our parts well.

As did the rest of the country in that terrible time.