What they don't tell you...

This is an essay I wrote for my creative writing class. Hope you like it.

~

What they don’t tell you about attending college in the same town you grew up in is how painfully set apart you feel, no matter what outsiders might tell you. You will always feel different than them; that empty feeling of regret in the pit of your stomach reminds you every day.

Growing up, your backyard is littered with foreigners – folks from the cities, folks from out-of-state, folks from other countries. They’re all after the same thing, a plaque on their wall and a line on their resume. You get to know many of them, through church, through friends, through school, but most are gone in four years, maybe five. Relationships are recycled, new faces applied to the skeletons of old.

Your parents were foreigners once too – Dad from Cleveland, Mom from Detroit. The Appalachian university sucked them in like it sucked in the others, but refused to let them go, even after 30 years. They are not Appalachia and they did not raise you to be Appalachia. But they sent you to school with Appalachia and 21 years in Appalachia will make at least a small part of you Appalachia.

You become divided. Part of you begs to relate more with your poverty-stricken farm-friendly deer-killing high school peers. The other part, the part you eventually allow your college friends, feigns innocence to the local culture. Either way you feel judged when you move in with the foreigners. They have a name for you: townie.

What they don’t tell you about attending college in the same town you grew up in is how difficult it is to leave. Dad’s job gives you free tuition – end of story. Two of your sisters went to private college and your parents deserve a favor. Besides, they say, the field you’re interested in has a great program there. Top five in the country, they say.

You knew your whole life you would end up there anyway so you don’t put up a fight. The small percentage of your high school peers that moved on to college figured the same.

What they don’t tell you about attending college in the same town you grew up in is how incredibly bored you become with your supposedly wonderful surroundings. Such a beautiful campus, they tell you. Such a unique culture, they say. But when day after endless day is spent in this environment and your 21-year history knows nothing but, its value fails to impress. The lush greenery has always been there. The historic red brick is just a building. And your older sister made sure the whole “streets flowing with booze and debauchery” thing was old by sophomore year of high school.

What they don’t tell you about attending college in the same town you grew up in is how much you want to be like everyone else. You want to be experiencing a new town, a new surrounding. You want to have taken some chances. You want to see to the world. But so far your world consists of one town.

What they don’t tell you about attending college in the same town you grew up in is that all you ever wanted is to see the beauty everyone else got to see. Because no matter how much you complain, you still love it as home.

Define pt. 4

Embrace your identity. Take advantage of the gifts God has given you - he gave them to you for a reason.

Never regret your past, because your past made you who you are. To regret your past is to suggest you do not like what you've become.

And remember, though you may envy what others have, there will always be someone who envies what you have.

Define pt. 3

Trumpet or snare drum. Trumpet or snare drum. Trumpet or snare drum.

I'm sitting restless on the cafeteria bench, pondering a bright future with both instruments. The music man hammers out a beat on the snare, then rises slowly up a scale with the trumpet. I'm supposed to listen to them both and pick one to play in band class. I knew I could succeed with both.

My friend John is there too, joining me on the bench, our backs turned to the music man. Listen, don't look. It's all about how the instrument sounds.

We had been waiting for this moment for a while, that moment when they call you out of your fifth grade class, play you some instruments, ask you to pick one, then suggest your parents fork over hundreds of dollars to buy you one brand new.

Music does not come cheap.

That in mind, I know my sister has a trumpet available to me if that's the path I choose. Would save my parents some money. And maybe my sister could teach me a few things. Not that it mattered, my sisters had played through to high school band, but it was never anything very serious to them. Just another activity to excel at in school.

I liked the snare drum's dominance - nice and masculine-sounding - but what kind of music is a simple '1,2,3,4' tap on a drum head? That doesn't impress the ladies, not even fifth grade ladies. I needed to sing with my instrument.

I go with the trumpet.

John ends up choosing the snare drum. No matter that his brother played trombone and has one ready for him, he wants to rebel. We head back to class talking up the future band we'll surely start.

Nobody in my family is very surprised I chose the trumpet. I had been thinking about it for a while. It was the easy choice.

That year, while John is taken out of band class to learn beats and rhythms for his drum, I'm stuck with the other instrumentalists in the band room learning basic notes and songs like 'Hot Cross Buns.' My friend Will is there too, he also chose the trumpet. We goof off most of class; teacher has only so much time and 20 other beginning musicians to teach. Regardless, turns out I'm ok at the trumpet. Top three musicians in the class, they claim. They stick me in front of a gym full of parents with Will and another trumpeter to play some silly song that we manage our way through.

Middle school presents some changes. Band class doubles, songs get harder. Sometimes the songs are fun, but for the most part it's all kind of boring. As long as we don't have to slog through music class, the alternative to band. Will and I try to make the best of it and compete to be the best in class. For the most part we just keep goofing off.

Our band teacher tells us about jazz band and we get pretty excited about it, but it falls apart when John moves to Los Angeles. Nobody to play the drums.

I keep up with band class because I don't know how to quit. Truth is I don't like it at all. I don't even practice at home.

A new band teacher is introduced when the other gets pregnant; I like him and he likes me. I'm the top trumpeter in class - Will finally quit - and he gives me some solos on cool songs. I like the attention but the trumpet doesn't really have a future for me. There is no trumpet in rock and roll. And it turns out ladies don't really care much for trumpeters, not even middle school ladies.

I quit the trumpet after the eighth grade. High school is approaching and I have a reputation to maintain.

High school is a lesson in laziness. I'm not athletic, so I don't play sports. I like watching TV, playing video games, listening to loud music; I thought it was kind of fun to be the standard rebellious teen. I hang out with my friends on weekends, get my sister to buy us beer. We listen to loud music together and talk about cool it would be to be in a band.

I pick up guitar, borrowing a friend's and teaching myself simple chords. Guitars are too expensive to buy and my parents aren't convinced enough I'd practice to buy me one. They were right, and I eventually give up. So much for the major record label waiting for me after college.

Somewhere around the time I get my driver's license I stop going to church with my parents. Just isn't holding my attention anymore. I believe in God but I also believe in sleeping in Sunday mornings. I stop going to youth group too; I'm different than those other students, and I know they know that. Don't much care for judgmental stares.

I keep up my good grades, but my teachers know I'm lazy. Not quite like his sisters, they say.

I graduate near the top of my class, but my resume and extracurricular activities are blank. I'm lucky I can get into college just with my grades.

College is the same as high school. I make friends in my dorm, party with them - alcohol but not drugs. Drugs scare me. Every weekend becomes a blur. We go to concerts uptown and admire the bands, thinking how cool it would be to be one of them. Too late now to learn guitar though.

Grades become less of a priority for me, though I hold my own. For the most part I hang in my room playing video games. College life becomes a routine of food, video games, partying, skipping class.

My parents say they're proud of me but I don't think they are.

Even though I'm in the same town I grew up in, I don't ever see my old friends. Not even old family friends I grew with. They stayed on the straight and narrow. From time to time I see old church friends or old school friends, but we both pretend not to notice each other.

Sometimes I regret the decisions I make. I know I'm lazy. I know I'm a bum. I know I'm out of shape. I know that my life has nothing to revolve around, nothing to identify with. But somehow I never find the time to care.

I just keep going with whatever life throws at me.

Define pt. 2

Practice started to pay off.

I quit band after eighth grade. I was making the transition into high school, and that transition did not include band. Too geeky. My friends weren't doing it. John had moved to Los Angeles.

Performance recitals did not hold a future for me. I had discovered something else: jazz band. Still a band, yes, but it was different. It was popular music. It was a chance to shine on the drum set. It was freedom.

We had a new band director - he liked me, and I liked him. He let me do whatever I wanted on the drums so long as it kept the right tempo. So jazz songs became rocks songs. Salsa songs became rock songs. And funk songs became funkier. Couldn't do much past a 4/4 beat but I sure as heck could do that well.

The drums became the centerpiece of the band.

Attention and compliments followed, even as John moved back and took over on some songs. He played the jazzier stuff, and I was happy to let him have those tunes. I liked the heavy, thumping, fast-paced stuff. More of an exclamation point. Folks like exclamation points. I trusted that high school girls especially did.

I was becoming 'the drummer.'

I was practicing every day at home. Things I couldn't do before were becoming easier. With the jazz band I was learning how to follow other musicians and how to let other musicians follow me. College was becoming less of a reality because I knew I would have a major-label deal with a popular band by then. I was a freshman in high school.

About the time I got my driver's license a new musical arena entered my world. The worship band at my church was well-known for its rocking contemporary style, I had known that my whole life. Soon as I got my first set, folks at church started talking about how I was their drummer of the future. Wasn't until they absolutely needed a drummer on the team that I was brave enough to give it a go.

I was timid at first. Playing in front of 100, 200 people Sunday mornings is scary, especially when you're thinking the wrath of God will smite you if you mess up. Keep it simple, keep it simple, I reminded myself. Eventually I eased into it. It became natural. The nervousness I originally experienced before services went away. Best part of all, I actually started to enjoy church for the first time.

After awhile I was a worship team mainstay. Folks I had known my whole life complimented me time after time. Folks I had never seen in my life approached me to compliment me. I liked the attention. I thought I was a star.

Life was the drums.

Life is the drums.

I stuck with jazz band until senior year, when it dissipated after several members graduated. I went strong with the worship team for about five years, playing almost every Sunday. I was the only option at church and I was happy to oblige. Nowadays I still sit in on some Sundays, but there are other drummers and I take my turn.

Now in college I have two bands. We've played some shows, not a lot but enough to get some attention. No major-label deal yet though.

A funny thing started to happen about the time I came to college, though. More than once people recognized me around town as 'the drummer from Central.' People at church wanted to talk to me about the drums but not about my life. I was drumming for various projects, but only when they needed me. I was just a 'drummer.'

Compliments and praise can only get you so far.

The drums can only get you so far.

I'm 21 now. I've played the drums since I was 12. Almost half of my time on God's good earth has been spent pouring myself into the drums.

My main band, though talented and worthy of fans, will probably not get a record deal or national tour. We'll play around Athens for awhile but it will go away eventually. I'm staring at graduation, and too often I feel like I don't have enough experience in journalism to land a good job.

I don't think I'm good at anything else.

I noticed a couple of days ago that my wrists hurt sometimes when they shouldn't. Same with my lower back. And my girlfriend does not like it that I say 'Huh?' so much. First three years I played I didn't wear ear plugs.

So what have the drums made of my life? After nine years I'm left with an aching back and the near-certainty that I will be deaf someday. And people know me just as 'the drummer.' They don't even know my name.

Drumming became my identity.

(to be continued)

Define

Man I am bad at this. Sorry, March.

Anyway, I'm taking a creative non-fiction writing class. Here is my attempt at some. (For fun.)

~

Trumpet or snare drum. Trumpet or snare drum. Trumpet or snare drum.

My back turned to the music man, legs straddling a cafeteria bench, I am listening to the two instruments, trying to imagine myself skillfully performing in front of thousands of people with both. I knew that I could succeed at either. Fact was I had to pick one and only one, then and there, and tell the music man.

I was eleven years old. Fifth grade is a crucial time in a child's search for identity. Of course, I didn't know that at the time. All I knew was that the letter 'A' was becoming more prevalent to my vocabulary and that it needed to stay that way, my older sisters had seen to it. I also knew that chasing girls on the playground was a thing of third-graders; fifth graders held girls' hands and wrote them innocent love letters.

To me, this day was just another part of my advancing childhood, another part of growing up. It was expected. I could never have known then, in my elementary school cafeteria, that I was staring down two separate paths, two separate identities by which I might define my entire life.

They had called me and my friend John down to the cafeteria to listen to a selection of instruments, from which we would choose one to stick to in band class. All fifth graders had this opportunity, few went for it. John and I weren't like most fifth graders. So together we sat there, on the bench, listening - but not looking - to the company musician sampling a half-dozen or so instruments.

John narrowed his choice down to the trombone and snare drum. His older brother had played the trombone.

I narrowed my choice down to the trumpet and snare drum. My older sister had played the trumpet.

We had to pick one.

Part of me thinks we both just wanted to rebel from our families' expectations. Maybe we were just incredibly bent on our parents' paying extra cash to acquire new instruments. I'm not even sure now if we peer-pressured each other into it. To me, all I remember was how dominant, how masculine that snare drum sounded. It didn't have a range of pitches, but it had a world of rhytmic potential screaming at me to give it a go.

We both went for the snare drum.

His parents picked up a used one from a family friend. I snagged a hand-me-down from another fifth-grader who went with the trumpet.

That year we had a private teacher who took us aside during band class, clapping out rythms. 1,2,3,4...1,2,3,4 - it's incredible how hard that can be. Then there was sheet music, only now we weren't counting, we were reading. A couple months of that and we were backing up the rest of band class. Practices turned to recitals.

Turned out I was ok at the drum. Top three musicians in my class, they claimed. They stuck me in front of a gym full of parents, hammering out a simple song with the other two elites, both trumpeters. To this day I don't think anybody knows how badly I screwed that song up. Somehow I managed to stop when the other two did, even though I was still a half-page of music behind my finish.

Elementary school turned to middle school. A new teacher, younger and more idealistic. Snare drum, apparently, was only the beginning. Now I was playing bongos, tambourines, and other percussive instruments with a band twice as big. Band was becoming more and more fun.

Seventh grade presented even more of a change. Percussion became a separate class, devoting more time to the drummers and helping to expand our musical boundaries. Xylophone, marimba, kettle drum, all entered my musical world. The snare drum, to me, was becoming increasingly boring. I wanted the good stuff, the difficult stuff.

John found it before I did.

He found the drum set in the classifieds. It was old and beat up; a led weight held down the floor tom. The mounted toms were different colors. The cymbals were cracked, the high-hat broken. He showed it off to me and our friend Will, delicately slapping the cymbals and thumping the kick as he tried to coordinate his limbs. The set, to us, was the king of percussion. We were more than jealous. I asked my parents for one for Christmas that year. I did so half-heartedly, knowing deep down what kind of investment it was.

Come Christmas morning, a heavy wrapped box sat in my lap. As the wrapping paper peeled away, my mind couldn't process the contents beneath. Cymbals. What am I supposed to do with cymbals? But no, Dad says, there is more, in the basement. Sure enough, in the back corner under the window, a sheet covers the rest. My first drum set.

Mom and Dad have a disclaimer: I have to practice. It is a huge investment, and they want it to count. I agree, and set about justifying their purchase.

It takes a month for me to coordinate my limbs so they don't all play the same thing. I experiment with beats and rhythms, starting with the easy stuff. I have a music book and CD, but I don't use them. I have a teacher, but he moves to Nashville. I'm on my own.

Days, weeks, months go by, every day practicing the drums. I've had hobbies before - could you have guessed I played Little League? - but they always faded. I was determined not to let that happen with the drums...

(to be continued)