Reflections of a Band Nerd

Some are born to be sports champions and pop stars, cowboys and supermodels. Some were destined for greatness.

Some were born to be in marching band.

The band nerd is a strange, elusive creature. Often traveling in packs about campus, propelled jerkily forward by the weight of bulky instrument cases. If you're not musically inclined, don't even try to understand their humor. Jokes about fermatas and embouchure techniques are better off unexplained.

In the Winter, they're pale from long hours in practice rooms, poring over complex manuscripts of hastily-scribbled notations. In the Summer, they willingly wrap their skin the the suffocating embrace of wool coats and double-lines pants, sticking a bundle of feathers in their leather hats and calling it tradition. They readily submit to fashion faux-pas (i.e. white shoes, black socks, purple pants) for the sake of a social scene quite separate from convention. Sock tans and neck-strap tans are legit.

Not to memtion that in every band rehersal, there's a string of perfect "That's what she said" moments waiting the conductor's excited instructions to play harder, faster, and louder.

They're a zany bunch. They make beautiful, sweet music together. And in case I forgot to mention, spend way too much time doing so.

My best memories from middle school to high school were from the concert and marching bands, and the people who shared my passion for music. I can look at a musician and often guess their instrument based on their personality and mannerisms. I conduct to pop music while waiting at red lights, I roll my heels when carrying heavy loads. From the Golden Band in the fall to Bengal Brass in the spring, band has defined my first-year experience in college. I was even initiated into the LSU band service fraternity this past Thursday. As I've come this far, my memories and experiences have been bound to this sole, substantial truth:

There's no friend like a band friend.

And no matter how bad the times get, I have my music and my French horn to turn to.

The first time my friends called me a band nerd, I cried. In 6th grade, that kind of peer pressure makes life rough for the socially awkward. Now, I have a blue-ribbon, big-band smile waiting. I've come to terms with my my quirky affinity for band kids. It has made me who I am today.

At 19, I'm no longer riding out the stereotype of the band nerd-- I'm embracing it.

"Pissing" off the handicapped

Imagine this. 

You're running late. It's Friday night, and you've got a date waiting at the movie theatre. 

You can almost taste the buttery popcorn kernels sticking gloriously to your gums. You long for the feel of that stiff, high-backed chair-- holding hands as the stale theatre odor engulfs you in reveries of sex, scandal, action, comedy. 

Your ear drums are bursting from the thought of high-definition surround-sound; your pupils are dilated and engaged. 

You're ready.

But it's opening night and the theatre parking lot is full. Your chances of finding a spot are nil. 

Damn.

Until you see them. The front row VIP section, open and ready. That red-carpet experience. Calling you to break the law.

The handicapped spots.

With that lovely blue hangtag, there are so many possibilities. 

But that was just a tangent. Here's when things get interesting.

My parents drove up last week to visit my brother and I at LSU. However, it was the drive up that made the trip a memorable one.

Traveling from Houston to Baton Rouge is a tedious venture. After a couple hours, my parents stopped at a gas station outside of Lafayette to fill up the tank. My dad dropped my sister and mom off in front of the convenience store so they could stretch their legs. 

My dad's a quadriplegic--paralyzed from the armpits down. Unable to find parking to accommodate the lift on his van, he waited for a handicapped spot to open up. After a few minutes, a car pulled out in front of him. As my dad began to drive towards the spot, he was intercepted by a truck. 

No handicapped plates. 

A group of men climbed out of the truck bed and waited. One man decided he needed to relieve himself.

He unzipped and did his business. Right in the handicapped spot. Right in front of my dad.

I guess I should go ahead and make this story come full circle. My dad and I agree that people often use their menial medical problems as an excuse to be lazy. We've seen it happen, watching the "physically impaired" donning handicapped placards like they would a backstage pass at an exclusive nightclub. They're cheating the system. However, there are some rare cases when those limited parking spaces are necessary. Some people are dependent on them to successfully and independently function in the real world.

Some people deserve to be treated like human beings, and given the due respect.

I could go on: using the handicapped restroom stall when the normal ones are open, parking in front of a ramp, parking in the yellow-lined area between handicapped spaces... 

Frankly, they're pissed off. And they should be.

From leaving shopping carts in the middle of a sidewalk to taking a leak on that blue-stenciled wheelchair, people are dehumanizing those who are striving to function like normal, professional members of society. 

Perfectly able beings, be aware. Your laziness might be ruining someone's day.

Election Day

College students lurk on street corners, soliciting themselves with glossy pamphlets in the white-collared costume of professionals. They spread their propaganda with the zeal of a wildfire, passing buttons in every classroom, slapping stickers in every hallway, and posting billboard-sized picket signs broad, twisted trunk of oak. They stake their territory and, in polished heels and starched pants, defend their claims.

The pinnacle of March Madness. The peak of political pressure. It’s no time to play nice. The claws are coming out.

Today is Election Day for LSU’s student government.

Tensions are high.

Candidates are strung out on caffeine pills and fueled by watered-down coffee and Winn-Dixie Danishes. They’ve been riding a three-week-long roller coaster of sleepless nights, underscored by campaign agendas and careful plotting. They cling to their ticket affiliation with an almost fanatical fervor. They intrude on the personal boundaries of passers-by, their arms flailing with campaign material, garnering votes with desperate pleas.

It’s beautiful psychosis.

For those students who rarely participate in politics on a national level, this local taste can be too much.

I should be out there campaigning right now.

So instead of being subtle, I’ll just cut the crap and say vote for me for UCFY Senator on the Palermo-Hathorn ticket. Log onto PAWS Do it. I can give the LSU political process a run for its money.

All right. I have done enough shameless campaigning for one day.

Octomom: Supplementing trash TV with Welfare payments

She's 33-years old, from Whittier, California. Jobless. In these times of economic struggle, she's a single mother, living with her mother in a three-bedroom home. Except there's a catch.

She's got 14 mouths to feed, all under the age of seven. 

Her name is Nadya Suleman. She's a trainwreck. And we can't look away.

On Jan. 26, Suleman gave birth to eight babies. Before she became pregnant, she was already the mother of six.

In a surprising twist of the Octomom saga, Suleman says it has been over eight years since she has had sex. Her oldest son is 7-years-old.

All 14 of the children were conceived through in vitro fertilization with sperm from a friend, David Solomon. 

Suleman met her baby's daddy at a nightclub. They went to the movies once, but Suleman claims she didn't want him to be her boyfriend. She had other plans for the direction of their relationship.

She wanted him to be the father of her children.

Suleman claims that Solomon has donated sperm for all of her children. Although Suleman talks to Solomon once a year, he does not see the children. 

In an interview with Associated Press, Suleman claimed that she wanted a huge family to make up for the "isolation" she always felt as a child. 

As a mother to so many children, she's replacing her isolation with neglect.

Good Morning America interviewed a potential "Octodaddy." Suleman's former lover Dennis Beaudoin claims that his "supersperm" sired the octuplets born to Suleman. Beaudoin says he donated sperm for Suleman's in vitro fertiliation plans while they were seriously involved between 1997 and 1999--according to Beaudoin, he offered to help her conceive after Suleman reportedly told him she had ovarian cancer.

 

Suleman has denied Beaudoin's claims that he has fathered any of her children. It was the donor after Beaudoin that "worked," said Suleman, making Solomon, the true father of her octuplets.

Beaudoin believes there is a family resemblance and is seeking a DNA test to prove his claims. If he is the true Octodaddy, he aims to shoulder the burden.

Suleman insists she never claimed to have cancer.

Unlike Jon and Kate plus 8,  Suleman has missed many opportunities to secure a spot in Hollywood. Although initially open to working with Suleman, TLC has since decided not to pursue any program involving Octomom and her party of 14. While wishing the family best of luck, other TV networks are following suit. Suleman's options for baby-induced fame are dwindling.

For now, Octomom is in a bind. Publicists don't want to represent her, Dr. Phil wants to give her a reality check. Her own father has publicly condemned her "irresponsibility," while openly begging public financial support. 

For Octomom and her children, Welfare is going to be on the menu for a long time. 

Writing love on her arms

It was 2 o'clock in the morning. 

I had spent my night wading through the treacherous realms of my Anthropology textbook. Darwin. Speciation. With my brain fried and my body's cry for sleep making me delusional, I knew I needed a break. Despite the essays I still had to write and the French I needed to study, I put my head down to recover. It would only be for a couple minutes, I told myself.

 I immediately drifted to sleep on the computer keyboard.

And then I heard a furious buzzing, making me jump from my chair and rub my eyes. After curiously staring  at the face of my digital clock, I picked up my phone. 

Unknown number. February 9th, 2:15 am.

It was The Text. The one that opened my eyes to someone else's pain, someone else's story. 

It was a plea for help, and I was physically sick. 

"Hey girl, it's me. I really just want it all to end. I can't take it anymore. I can't."

Her name is Joy, 17-years-old and in an emotional ditch--struggling to break to the surface of her despair. It's a dance I know well. The tumultuous sashay of high school drama and the casual decay of naiveté that follows, performed in tandem with swaying adolescent hips and the screams of an alcoholic parent who cares too little, too late. 

I don't know how or why this Missouri girl got my number, but I felt compelled to talk back. She was trying to reach a friend from back home in the Woodlands; our numbers were crossed in some silly limbo of fate. I listened for hours as she trusted me, a stranger, with a tale of scandal in the family, emotional abandonment by her parents, and a move from Texas that accelerated her life into collapse. 

She opened the floodgates of her pain and engulfed me in a dark world, twisted, oppressive, and mature beyond my comprehension-- it's a reflection of a life I would fear to endure as lonely as she. 

It's a living hell, and it puts my heart on the verge of shattering.

Addicted to drugs. Drunk on weekends. She's trying to be a normal teenager, playing soccer and volleyball on her school's varsity team, while playing "mom" to five young, neglected siblings. Dealing with a cheating boyfriend. A dad who never calls. A mom who is never around. 

Feeling nothing. 

With a world spiraling inexorably out of control, she traces the veins on her arms with knives and paperclips, defining her anguish with rows of crimson. When the streams heal, the scars endure-- a written history all her own, carved into flesh.

It's so she can feel something, control something, she said. But this time, she told me, she wanted to die.

I'm getting a glimpse of a different life, yet surprisingly bound to my own. Shards of my own past run parallel to her own, but her hurts swept her in a different direction, towards other outlets for her pain. 

It's been a few weeks, and we still talk from time to time. Since that night of tears and unleashed fears, I have been haunted by another's phantasmagoria. Perhaps just listening to her was enough, perhaps that's all she needed to convince herself there was something worth living for. 

She told me no more drugs, no more cutting, no more alcohol--she wants to change. But I know it will be hard for her to do it alone.

I'm still growing, I'm still praying. And I'm realizing how insignificant my own demons really are.

Dodging beads: An outsider's perspective on Mardi Gras

Bourbon Street on a Saturday night is ridiculous. But when you add the upcomiong Fat Tuesday into the mix, and a fine medley of crazy results. For someone foreign to Louisiana, the exchange of bright beads with partial nudity is lewd, crude, and downright intriguing. Before I left for LSU, my mom had given me a hug and told me to have fun. "When in Rome, do what the Romans do, babe," she said.

So I decided I had some exploring to do.

Born in Massachusetts and raised a Texas girl, I took in the festivities through unbiased and sober eyes. The masked men on the floats terrified me. I watched my friends willingly get pelted with beads, and finally my turn came around. A grotesquely fat man in a Joker outfit planted a five pound bag of beads on my face.

On my face, for crying out loud.

I could have sworn he was aiming. After being helped up and wiping the beer-thickened mud off my jeans, the beads kept coming. Not only that, but my feet hurt from standing and my ears were throbbing from all the drunken screams when Kid Rock rolled by. Please.

Or maybe I'm just a bad sport. Maybe.

When the Endymion parade was over, my friends had the brilliant idea to trek over to Bourbon Street. Two words: body paint. On overweight women, on men in thongs. It was gloriously disgusting, but all "part of the experience." I was promised me a beignet trip on the way out of the French quarter, so I decided to tag along. But the line was too long at Cafe du Monde. Instead of beignets, I was condemned to hell 15 times over by the radical Christians screaming around Jackson Square, and took refuge in what turned out to be "The most visited gay bar in New Orleans!" We walked back down Bourbon to get pelted with more beads, tops flying up in a rhythmic stream of grivoiserie. Well, at least the gay-bar had clean restrooms.

Next year I'm going to Canada instead.

Where I'd Rather Be

I want to feel the the sun raging on my skin as dust whirls and swells across arid African plains, coarse grass shimmering by my Jeep in a blur of silk. I crave to be behind the lense of my Canon Rebel, capturing the culture, living for the outdoors, sleeping under the stars, and following forbidden trails that map the desires of my heart. I desire to seek the rare glimmers of the primal and the primitive. I yearn to escape from the monotony of the civilized. 

And I want to get paid to do what I love-- to engulf myself in a world beautiful and austere. This office job just doesn't cut it. As much as daydreams tear down my patience, the vision of traveling the world as a photojournalist for National Geographic is both my motivation and my yoke. It grips me, it calls me. It's a reverie as comfortable and worn as the soles of my shoes.

As a college student, It's accepted that if we hit the books now, our dreams will naturally follow suit. But as people change, so do their destinies--our futures throb to the cadence of our own lives, held to the rhythmic strum of our actions and decisions. 

Ask your professor, your parent, the lonely man in the supermarket: Are you the person you always hoped to be? Are you pursuing the life you dreamed of? Listen. How many of them chased dreams of ballerinas or baseball players? It's a desolate life when one locks their dreams away. It's a void, an abyss, an absence of hope. An existence forsaken.

I hope someday my passion and my career intersect, and what I love is in perfect equilibrium with what I do.

So for now, I guess I'll get back to daydreaming. For now, I'll study hard and believe that making the grades will be redemption for my soul-searching. On those tortured evenings when this is not enough, I'll strap on my hiking boots and content myself with a starless Louisiana night, miles away from my heart.

Summer in a Snapshot

I've never particularly liked Tuesdays, but this one reminds me of home when I was just a kid. Home on the outskirts of the country, where white-picket fences dotted the horizon. Sitting on porch swings, spitting watermelon seeds, listening to my Grampy talk about growing up as cigar smoke billowed around in a comforting shroud. About the times I used to see the future as something that stretched as endlessly as the Texas sky.

I’m cutting class for the afternoon, sitting Indian-style on the parade grounds. The weather wonderful—warm enough to shrug off my sweater, but chilly enough for visions of sunburns and lemonade. I can almost taste the salt water, the coconut suntan lotion; I can almost feel the sand shifting underfoot.

Just a beautiful day, thawing away three weeks of stress. Perfect.

The light stings my eyelids, so I close my eyes and listen. Frisbees drone overhead, soccer balls swish and thump as they pass underfoot. Campus buzzes with good-spirits, appearing from beneath scarves and boots and winter hats. Dancing in the sunlight, sashaying in the oaks. Awakened.

At moments like this, living comes so naturally.

I shudder as a thick shadow steals over the grounds. The breeze whips my hair across my face. Icy tendrils of wind pelt my neck and arms. Squinting, I look up. A bruise is lurching overhead. Storm clouds stain a blue, crystal sky.

The parade grounds clear, leaving me alone with my thoughts. With a broken umbrella as my only backup plan, I hug my sweater tight and head home—back to the mundane, back to mediocrity.

It’s enough to remind me that moments like this are fleeting. Even beauty chooses to linger in rarity. Perfection is a snapshot.

It’s wintertime in Baton Rouge, but summer’s blooming.

Gravity equals Tragedy? No way, honey. Not anymore.

I was in love once.

Falling for someone is exactly how it sounds: A complete absence of control. One second, you've got two feet planted on solid ground. The next, you're sucked back down to your knees-- mouth dry, stomach knotted, spiraling until you forget what it's like to stand. It's exhilarating. It's frightening. It's gravity at its best.

I was in love once.

My parents weaned me on individuality. Miss Independent, vulnerability has never been a favorite of mine. And then I fell hard. Love gave life to my my fortified sense of romance. First came attraction, then came surrender.

I once was helplessly in love.

It crushed, it tore, it burned. It was beauty, it was brokenness, it was sustenance. And in the end, it mourned.

I was in love. Once.

Thriving on sass and scoffing at convention, I embraced sovereignty with a flourish. I was the girl who grew up too fast. Now, I'm a woman confused, still choking on regret and bad timing.

I was in love once. But my heart's still beating, so I'm moving on.

What really counts is on the inside... right?

Our mothers taught us better than to be judgmental, but sometimes a first glance is enough to gag on that noble upbringing.

We try not to do it. Skinny jeans torn at the knee, a blotchy black-tee, spikes and chains looped about his neck. His tattered All-Stars scream delinquency, his greasy tresses conjure images of the homeless. Your typical teenage badass, he strides along oblivious to the stares that follow the clunky rhythm of his messenger bag as it swings over the pavement like a pendulum.


He could be an Australian surfer, transferred on an academic scholarship. He could be the loser ex-boyfriend of your calculus partner, a trainee for the Navy Seals, or your future boss. But to us, he's The Reject. We follow his footsteps until they fade into the gait of another face, another label.


At the bus stop. she pops a morning-after pill with a Diet Coke. The Party Girl, hair rumpled, with a wild night mapped out on her face in mascara. Cigarette smoke and the faint smell of spilt booze swirl about her like a cloud of perfume. She wraps scandal around her like a little black dress, donning sex like she would her favorite pair of pumps.


In the elevator, he tells stories about the time he took 12 Everclear jello-shots and lived to tell the tale. And, dude, how about that one time he woke up, naked and spread-eagle, in the front lawn of the Zeta house after a notorious blackout. Meet The Alcoholic, whose sweat alone is 100 proof, whose fake ID is stashed between sporadic dollar bills and maxed-out credit cards. His DWI court date hangs on the fridge under a Corona magnet. Hangover and morning are synonymous.


You've seen her in the classroom, front-and-center-- a flurry of note-scribbling and hand-raising. The Overachiever, she strolls through academia as casually as pushing glasses up the bridge of her nose. She balances 20 hours as effortlessly as a veteran high-wire performer, juggling physics and student government and Latin club with calculated ease. The creases in her face are all business, whispering tales of sleepless nights and a bright future. Her track record of brilliance runs as long as her IQ.


On the track at the gym, he's lapped you twice before the song pulsing on your iPod has changed, his toned calves and rippling biceps mocking you as they tense in double time a few meters ahead. The Athlete is one whose thirst for excellence is met with consistency and patience, whose hunger for perfection is satiated only by perseverance. He wipes competition from his brow and soaks determination through his pores. Endorphins are his heroin. He greets dawn with cardio and dusk with a barbell. Whey protein and muscle shirts are always on the menu.


In the quad, she sprawls across a bench, a book in one hand and a paintbrush in the other, staring down the clouds at mid-afternoon. The Artist's pursed lips speak of tragedy and beauty, a collision of reverie and reality. She declares herself to be a pessimist, but in reality she is a dreamer, scribbling poetry with Sharpie ink and hair-dye. Her hands deftly craft heartbreak into something lovely and concrete. Throwing a finger at convention, she declares society to be the misfit, not her dreadlocks and daydreams. Her originality is a constant flowing stream, lapping gently at the banks of independence. Creativity is her Muse; love, her compass.


LSU is a medley of these students: The Party Girl, The Alcoholic, The Overachiever, The Athlete, The Artist. The Southern Belle at the library may be a sex kitten, her hickeys disguised under a cardigan and pearls; the grungy slacker in French, a closet genius, toting a 4.0 under his nonchalant visage.


In all shapes and sizes, all hair-styles and walks of life, students elucidate these personas in shades as varying and luminous as autumn leaves. You simplify from the polo shirts and nose-rings, and the general equation remains the same: There are freaks at every threshold, and dreamers at every dorm.

Tiptoes of Heroes

Sitting alone in Tiger Stadium, the world seems stagnant.

It seems smaller now, less impressive without the starless Louisiana night hanging overhead. It's late afternoon and the birds are waltzing. They swoop and swagger, drawing figure-eights with wing-tips and making lazy pirouettes on the rim of clouds-- a whisper of wings beating to the cadence of human heartbeats.

Is that the faint pulse of a bass drum, a steady rumble of tenors and snares? I know it's only my imagination, but even the wind seems to stir echoes of Saturday nights, lingering on in every nook and every crack of concrete. Enduring.

Death Valley is a symphony of silence, a coliseum of color.

Below is a richly swept carpet of green, scarred and swirling and patched and imperfect. It reminds me of an old woman, revealing her rough, lined face after washing off a mask of make-up. The ornate words and ruler-perfect yard lines are no longer splashed like battle-paint across the field. It's a treasure map of history-- telling tales of games where men were made and battles were fought.

Shadows creep and flagpoles sway. The chilly, twisting breeze battles with goose bumps on my arms. The floodlights, once the glinting guardians of game day, loom like gargoyles, throwing jagged silhouettes below. As the sun sinks in the west, the stadium is split between day and night, both teasing and haunting in the absence of cheers. It's almost eerie, this silence, ebbing and receding with the gentle flow of chatter. It reminds me of the campus thriving outside, but I'm feeling miles away among the staggered staircase of silver bleachers. I'm in a breathing cathedral, under a china-blue sky. A Mona Lisa, a Rembrandt. A canvas, a living masterpiece.

So, what's left when the crowd goes home? What remains once the hot-dog stands are locked, once the noble anthem of purple and gold fades from the bleachers?

Death Valley becomes a sleeping giant, a throbbing heart in the midst of LSU, only to be awoken once more by the tiptoes of heroes.