A World of Music: //freshman journey\\

>the pit<

>>The Pit<<

            Leanne was having fun watching the band march. Greatman was being merciless tonight, drilling the band over and over and over and not giving them any breaks. But there was a reason for it, because they kinda sucked.

            Unfortunately.

            “Reset!” Greatman yelled, right on cue, and everyone scrambled back to their spots. Leanne let herself pick out individuals: Lea with the trumpets, Kassie with the piccs, Terrence with the trombones…

            As they repeated their two sets, Leanne shook her head, turning back around to tap on the wooden(?) planks of her marimba out of boredom. Greatman always, always, always stopped right before the pit entrance. And it was really, really, really annoying.

            Suddenly, Greatman’s voice boomed out of the speakers. “Joseph, go take a lap! Now!”

            Joseph, or Joe as he was often called, walked calmly out of the ranks of people with his trumpet in hand. He was a sophomore that liked to act up – as was expected from the trumpet section. He put his trumpet down on the edge of the blue turf – yes, the field was blue – and began to run.

            But he wasn’t really running, and Leanne laughed as he began doing the “Ally Shuffle”…

           In P.E. class, our teacher had just asked us to do a fifteen-minute jog/walk. It was really easy and simple – run the straights, walk the curves on the track. I had no problem doing it, really; all I had to do was keep up with my friend Kassie who was probably way more in shape than I was.

            Our friend Ally usually ran with her friend Kayla, but she was absent today, and so Ally joined us. We began to run at our usual pace, but Ally was even more out of shape than me. “I don’t run, guys!” she complained in between pants when we’d finally reached the end of the straight part and slowed down to walk. “You even walk too fast!”

            “I can’t walk slowly,” Kassie said, shrugging. “I just can’t. I can’t run slowly, either…”

            “You guys, look at how much easier it is to run my pace!” Ally began to do this sort of really, really, really slow jog that was barely a jog at all. Kassie giggled.

            “I think I can walk faster than you ‘run’,” she remarked, and Ally sighed.

            “Yeah, you probably can. But see, it’s so much easier!”

            “That isn’t running, or jogging,” I cut in. “It’s more like… shuffling…”

            And Joe was definitely doing the Ally Shuffle. Leanne could hear every time his feet scraped the ground as he shuffled along. By the time he got all the way around, the band had already rehearsed the same set eight times, and then moved on to the next two sets and rehearsed that one three times. He picked up his trumpet and rejoined the band, and Leanne turned to catch Kassie’s eye.

            Quite honestly, Leanne thought, Joe was better at the Ally Shuffle than Ally herself.