Saturday, March 05, 2011

Snow and Music

Today is Saturday. Which was fun. Involved the visiting of friends. However, it was yesterday that I'd like to highlight. Now, wee bit of exposition. I've been playing flute for going on seven years. (And piano for two years more. Not well, mind, but I can play both.) So, given my useless experience, I've joined band. They're rather unrelated, we have some incredibly talented musicians in band, I just so happen to not be one of them. Anyways, bands (I'm in concert, just figured I should specify, in addition to a flute ensemble, but that doesn't come into play today), enter music festivals to be adjudicated in order to grow and learn since you never stop learning if you're involved with music.

Our director doesn't like the local festival, so we go to Sudbury. Which is a 3.5 hour drive or so away from our school. So off trekked the members of our band to the school to leave at 7:30, which really isn't all that early. We drove, stopped shortly to get changed and potentially grab something to snack on on our way to the school that was hosting the festival.

That in and of itself was an adventure. The school was practically all stairs. It was absolutely ginormous. Coming from a school of around 500 students that has a total of 9 hallways, in addition to three staircases to get to our very tiny second floor, we were all in awe. There were stairs everywhere, and seemingly never ending floors. While it was clearly very old, they had some absolutely amazing murals. I really rather wish my school had the drive and the finances to do something like that, but that's neither here nor there. But we got to the auditorium (which was another unheard of thing, my school has a gym that we push the weight equipment to the side of if it needs to be used, and they hate the band program because they're pretentious idiots, so we never use the stage for band, the play does, but that's different, but the band just uses the floor to avoid being harassed), played, and went to go home.

It was snowing on the way home. Actually, it was snowing when we got there, but it was bad. And we had time constraints, since everyone wanted to be back for the annual semi formal dance. Especially me, since I'm on student council and am expected to help out with it, running things. The weather didn't like that though. So we got stuck behind a plow in absolutely awful weather that just kept getting worse. It took eons to get even to Parry Sound. While we were driving, apparently there were several accidents. We saw one car on its roof at the side of the road. Then I guess other students witnessed people going into ditches and whatnot. However, what really bothered me the most, and that's still haunting me, is the accident I witness. Keep in mind, that I've never seen an accident happen before. Ever. Actually witnessing that would have been traumatizing in and of itself, if it weren't for the way it happened. I was staring out the front window of the coach bus, since I get car sick and it helps to look out the front, and all you can hear is the faint screaming of breaks. Then a car in the lane beside us apparently spins (this part I missed) and slammed head on into the guardrail. That part a saw. Our bus didn't stop. That I can kinda understand, we couldn't get over, it was mucky, and there are kids on board so we have to avoid being a liability. But we didn't even call 911. I had no idea where we were, so I couldn't do it. All I know is that someone could have been seriously hurt, but we couldn't tell because we were already gone. From what I could see no one else was stopping either. Even if we couldn't stop, we should have called and let them know. If nothing else, they could have damaged the guardrail which could hurt someone else, if not bashed their head in during their own accident. So I'm still horrified by that and not knowing if the person (or people, I just realized there could've been more than one in the car, which makes it even worse) was hurt, and not knowing if they got help in time. Because of this, though, I think I got an idea for a potential novel, but we'll see.

Anyways, so we continued to slog on. Snow turned to sleety rain. Sleety rain turned to more freezing rain. Then freezing rain turned into rain that was technically freezing but didn't seem to be as loud. We made it home. An hour later than planned, but we did it.

And that is my fabulous anecdote. It's nice to write it down, get rid of my car accident demons. I just really hope everyone involved was okay, and that everyone else who was in an accident on the road that night is fine, too.

This wasn't really about my life, but if we were to talk just about my life nothing exciting would happen. So you get my bad band story.

I'm done babbling now. Cheers.

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