Getting Kicked Out of High School Band and Other Fallout

My freshman year I was in the HS marching band and in ROTC (yeah, you could have pasted a “IMADORK” sign to me). In ROTC, I was also in the Drill team/Color Guard class, so I had two classes of ROTC, and two of band. I knew how to march.


The band had raised money to march in Ronald Reagan’s 1980 inaguaral parade, but another CA band was picked over us. (Nice intro to political process). So we had this money we raised, and needed to go somewhere – and Hawaii was picked as the destination to go to over the Easter break. There was supposed to be a band competition, but it really wasn't.

We had to bunk up three people to a room, and I got picked by my section leader and his buddy to be roomates – as they told me, “We know that you won’t talk about what we are doing here”. They kicked me out of the room to have girls over, drink beer, and smoke pot. They did this most every night.

The last night there, I get back to the room and they are pretty wasted and the girls are gone. They had to get rid of the beer, so they told me to drink the rest of one. A few minutes later, there’s a knock at the door, I answer it, and its the band director and the VP. They come into the room, and after a few tense minutes, tell us that we will discus this back home.

I was kicked out of the band and suspended for a few days from school.

At the end of the school year(month or so later) the ROTC has their awards dinner. As part of the Drill Team/Color Guard, I earned some ribbons that I did not get. I asked the teacher about this later, and he stated “You are not going to get those ribbons due to that incident” – he meant the band incident. I told him that that was band and had nothing to do with ROTC, and he said it did, and that was that.

The politics of having to maintain the “proper look” was a bit of a surprise to a high school kid. I became upset about ROTC, and when a buddy of mine quit mid way through the next, I wanted to as well. The teacher actually had the gall to call my parents and try to convince them to make me stay in ROTC, but I had made up my mind to get out of the political game. This upset my parents to no end, but later on when I told them about the ribbon fiasco, (which they had not known about), they understood why I did what I did.

I don't regret getting kicked out of the band or leaving ROTC. It was part and parcel of growing up and figuring out that I wasn't going to have those labels attached to me.