Our son Joey, from Orlando came to visit us last weekend. The purpose of this visit was to go through many, many boxes containing his high school awards, books, papers and band memorabilia. As he is now 26 years old, it has been a while since high school (he was class of 1999). I especially enjoyed the papers that I had a hand in. Let me just say that my second high school career was better academically than my first!! "We" only made 2 B's the whole 4 years, making us in the top 5% of the graduating class. We read lots of books, wrote a bunch of papers, completed a ton of fairly useless projects. We drove EVERYWHERE, always stopping at 7-11. He would smell like coffee when he came out, go figure.And, I really enjoyed my band experience, even though I can't read or play the first note of music. Seriously though, I really did enjoy being a band parent. As it should be. Turns out that Joey was a very gifted trumpet player. So, my second high school go 'round was filled with marching band competitions, auditions, rehearsals, concerts, Band Booster meetings, and music lessons. A air conditioned/heated concert hall was a much more comfortable environment for a parent and than a cold or rainy or steaming hot baseball field or soccer field. My advice to parents: start those music lessons early!! And don't forget to read with your kids, even through high school.
