The Sections At 1 AM The Night Before A Competition

flutes/piccolos: asleep scattered across the floor of someone’s bedroom wearing matching sweatpants.
clarinets: moodily playing pokémon
alto saxophones: all at walmart separately because they all think they’re the ones responsible for treat bags and forgot until now. never see each other and each get like ten treat bags the next morning. confused but happy.
low reeds: finding more ways to hide dirty jokes on their section hoodies.
trumpets: practicing their “marching face” in the mirror to make it suitably focused and serious yet smoldering.
mellophones: trying to figure out how to attach a large sign to their instrument that says “it’s a mellophone, not an exceptionally large trumpet.” they are doomed to fail and the masses remain uneducated.
trombones: frantically trying to fix their instrument from attempting to pop to the box in their bedroom with the slide as far down as possible and slamming into the ceiling.
baritones/euphoniums: reflecting bitterly on all the times the tubas have upstaged them. vow to never let it happen again.
tubas/sousaphones: standing in front of a mirror trying to figure out precisely which angle at which to tip their beret to look the most roguish.
pit percussion: still loading their equipment on the band truck even though they started after school; one of them is missing for no reason.
drum line: performing a ritual sacrifice.
color guard: already doing their hair. still almost don’t get done in time.
drum majors: practicing their salute 40,098 times, then making sure they don’t “stand weird” while conducting.