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Joseph BushDouglas Crawford-ParkerENGL 5552/8/17Re: Beating the BearsWelcome to the Marching Jayhawks! 2015 is going to be a big year for this organization, and a new leaf for the team we support! We will have fun, we will play music, but be prepared – You will know only defeat this season. From September to November, every game you attend will be a loss by the team wearing your colors. Be prepared to stand for every second of every game. Be prepared to work for hours each week. Be prepared. Below is our schedule for this season. September 5th, 2015 – South Dakota State Jackrabbits – “2015 Pop Show – Taylor Swift, Jason Derulo, Walk the Moon”The first game of my junior year took place at noon on one of the hottest days of the late summer. Two years prior, for this game, we wore shorts and polos. This year, we had just purchased new uniforms. For as breathable and brightly colored as these uniforms are, they’re still made of wool, and ninety plus degree weather treats them poorly. In the third quarter, one freshman passed out.After seeing this, another freshman, named Josh, made it clear to me that he felt he might do the same. I told him to sit down. As I filled a water bottle for him, I felt some pride in being apparently enough of an authority figure to be trusted with someone’s well being.My head pounded with a dehydrated headache once I got home. I drank several glasses of water and fell asleep on our black vinyl couch for three hours.September 12th, 2015 – Memphis Tigers – “Band Day – Avengers Theme”The week before this game, I went through a breakup, and the band at the other major university in the state flubbed one formation and it looked like they had a huge phallus on the field. I felt for them, but I also needed something to find funny.The Jayhawks went out and scored early on. One freshman said to me “I thought we were supposed to be bad!” I told her to wait. The Jayhawks proceeded to lose by 32.October 3rd, 2015 – “Heart of America Marching Festival – Swing Show – Sing Sing Sing, Caravan, Sweet Georgia Brown”This is a high school marching performance that we host. We perform at the competition’s end. High school band kids and parents fill up about half of the stadium for this performance. It’s often joked that this the biggest and most enthusiastic crowd that we get all year. My high school band attends this contest every year, and they had won the prior two years. I had only one person – my younger sister - still tying me to my old school. They expected to win this contest, but ended up in third place.By chance, as I was helping to clean up the stadium, I ran into my old band director. I tried to talk to him, but I got only a “hey” from him, and nothing more. I got the hint, and I continued on.October 10th, 2015 – Baylor Bears – “Swing Show – Sing Sing Sing, Caravan, Sweet Georgia Brown”We did this show four times. This instance was only the second, so we weren’t sick of it yet.Each week, the director would send band members a mass e-mail. This gave us an itinerary to follow for the coming game. He would go hour-by-hour over each Saturday, from a 5 AM rehearsal to the kickoff of the game. Each game’s kickoff was marked with the same phrase. For this game, it read like this:11:00 AM – Kickoff – Beat the Bears!!For any other game, substitute the word “Bears” with any other school’s mascot. The phrase “Are you ready to beat the Bears?” was the last thing he would ask before this game before our pregame started.We had grown accustomed to reading this every week and knowing the phrase wouldn’t come true. In particular, this week was even less likely to come true. The Bears had come in undefeated; the third ranked team in the country. The Bears were 35-point favorites to win. People around me said that it was a record high.“Beating the Bears” became a concept so impossible to anyone around me that the phrase became a, like Beating the Bears was a dream, an impossible occurrence that couldn’t happen, even in the realm of absurdism in which we made for ourselves. That phrase became an embodiment of us that year – ironic optimism in the face of impossibility. Do what cannot be done. Beat the Bears.October 17th, 2015 – Texas Tech Red Raiders – “Swing Show – Sing Sing Sing, Caravan, Sweet Georgia Brown”Texas Tech ran some trick play for a meaningless two-point conversion at some point during this game. Alden, my roommate, turned said “I hate Texas Tech now. I hate them now. They’re my rival now.”He still hates them. He acknowledges that it’s not necessarily rational, but he hates them.I was envious of that. We had watched five losses to that point. What had started as sadness had turned to detachment.When I was fourteen, my mother cautioned me against playing Call of Duty out of fear that I would get desensitized to blood and violence. I wondered at the time what desensitization would feel like, if I would notice it happening or not, were it to happen at all.This game was when I got desensitized to losing.The Jayhawks had a shot near the end - they were only losing by three points, and had about 90 yards to cover if they were to win. I did not let myself get excited. I drowned in numbness. I embraced the numbness. I let the numbness overtake me as I watched the Jayhawk quarterback throw an interception that was returned for a touchdown in the final minutes.October 24th, 2015 – Oklahoma State Cowboys – “Swing Show – Sing Sing Sing, Caravan, Sweet Georgia Brown”We left for Stillwater at 2 PM on a Friday, and we arrived there at around eleven PM. We were instructed to be up at 8 AM. The game kicked off at 1 PM.At 10:31 AM, a woman driving a 2014 Hyundai Elantra drove through several police barriers blocking off a street for Oklahoma State’s homecoming parade. The car struck fifty pedestrians surrounding the street, leading to four deaths and forty-six injuries.They didn’t have time to let us perform at halftime, so we were pushed to performing our show on the field twenty-five minutes before the game started. We made the trip to Stillwater in 2013, when I was a freshman. Before we went out on their field, one of the sophomore trombonists said “They might boo us. Maybe like a little bit of the crowd will boo us. Some of them will cheer. Most of them won’t care.” That year, we ran out to a dull roar.In 2015, we ran on to silence. We ran off to scattered applause and more silence.During the Oklahoma State band’s pre-game show, the crowd was asked, over the public address, to observe a moment of silence for the accident. In the first quarter, the announcer asked students to call their parents and let them know that they were safe.By the end of the third quarter, Oklahoma State was leading the game 56-10.Everyone around me kept quiet. They just wanted to leave. They made their points vocally. I didn’t want to drown in sorrow, but I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice. I don’t think I said a word during the final quarter.The walk back to our bus took 20 minutes. I walked it alone.The bus ride home took ten hours.Alden says that the conversation we had later was the only time he has ever seen me angry. In the pocket of people around me, there was anger. In the stands as a whole, it was sorrow.October 31st, 2015 – Oklahoma Sooners – “Homecoming - Halloween Show”We had played the same goddamn swing music for a month and a half by this point. I started to feel like Jack Nicholson typing the same phrase into a typewriter in The Shining. This creative blockage came out of me in the form of me dressing as an orange traffic cone and dancing to the Ghostbusters theme. We all wore costumes for this game.The camera operators loved this because they were able to pan over the band and focus in on particularly bizarre costumes. The tubas wore doctors’ scrubs. The clarinets dressed up as the aliens from Toy Story. One of the bass drummers was dressed as Jesus.The trombones were traffic cones. I wore an orange shirt, black pants, and a plastic traffic cone strapped to my head by an elastic band. My cone never stayed on, it kept tilting off in front of me to the point where I couldn’t see. When the cameras panned across our section, everyone else’s cone was pointed upwards save for mine, which had fallen off and was dangling from my trombone.Apparently a FOX Sports camera caught this, because a professor called me out on it the next week.November 21st, 2015 – West Virginia Moutaineers – “Movies - Star Wars, James Bond”This music made the fact that we were suffering through a winless season more bearable. The show was difficult, but we put in the extra effort to make sure it was executed well. This was to be the highlight of our season – recognizable music, challenging formations, and the game seemed like it could be a highlight as well.This was our second-to-last home game. The previous game was the team’s closest of the season, a six-point loss on the road. This game looked like the turning point. West Virginia seemed to be on the way down, KU seemed to be on the way up, and our show was going to be great.West Virginia was leading 42-0 at halftime.The stands were nearly empty.We never did this show again.November 28th, 2015 – Kansas State Wildcats – “Senior Day – Baseball Show!” The Kansas City Royals won a championship about a month prior to this show being performed. The irony of our band celebrating success in a different sport during a winless season was lost on nobody.We didn’t actually get to perform this show, anyway.The last game of my junior season took place in the early afternoons of one of the coldest days of the year. The bleachers, the stairs, and the field were covered in ice. We were advised not to run onto the field, so we did not. Kansas State’s band apparently had multiple members who were unable to make it due to the ice.We couldn’t move on the field, so we stood in the formation of the Royals’ logo and played “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” to a mostly empty stadium. Ice and cold beget numbness. Ice and cold and numbness in this case begot me standing silently as the Jayhawks lost by 40. Kansas State fans heckled me as we walked out for the halftime show. I had to chip the ice off of the bleacher in front of me with the hard end of my mouthpiece. I drank out of a half-frozen water bottle. I felt nothing.2015 was cemented as the winless year. I had stood in attendance for every game possible (and I went to bars to watch the five that I couldn’t) and there was nothing that I could do. I had expected to feel anguish. I was not prepared to feel nothing. ................
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