Riding in the back seat of my car at the moment is a maroon and white megaphone, vintage 1968. The letters BHS are neatly printed on one side and Corlea, written in script is on the other side. I am going through my closet in my mother's house in Blytheville and decided to clean it out as much as possible.....something my mother has asked me to do for the past-uh--say--40 years. I just never had a place to put my school memorabilia, but now that we have a large basement, I have no excuse. Anyway, that megaphone brought back a bunch of memories about how I got it. I had been in the band since 7th grade. My plan was to learn a musical instrument, and then, when the time came, try out to be a majorette. But the time never came. I was scared to death to twirl a baton in front of the band all by myself, and when I practiced, I dropped that silver stick more times than I could spin it around. Alas, I was not going to follow in my mother's footsteps. (She had set the bar high having been a majorette at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.)
I had gotten tired of the practices after school in the heat, the same John Phillip Sousa marches we played over and over, and the itchy wool uniforms with the big hats and their plastic chin straps. But I just couldn't give up 5 years of playing the flute without something else to fill the void. So a friend of mine suggested I try out for cheerleader. Which I did. And I lost. So I continued in the band, but I was over it. And something I have learned is that once you are over something, it is best to move on. I had asked a friend of mine who was on the cheerleading squad what it would take for me to make the team the next time tryouts came around. She said my jump was pretty pitiful and uninspiring.....nothing that would stir up a crowd. So I began an eleven month long jump fest. I decided that I would have the best jump I could possibly have and took every measure possible to ensure that. It was a scene from SNL. My picnic table in my backyard became my platform for jumping. And I cannot begin to tell you how many hours of jumping off that table I spent in my quest for the perfect jump. I was going to have such a terrific pike that I would have to be elected my last year in high school. And I was elected. All that time jumping off the picnic table and jumping in front of my mirror paid off. And then my dreams of a date every weekend would come true. But reality bit. I had around 5 dates my entire senior year, did not have a date to my prom until I asked someone myself, and hid from the band director when I saw him in the hall. But I had a hell of a split jump and that's something you can always use, right?
