Yesterday was a DCI competition. DCI stands for Drum Corps International, for those who don't know, and it involves kids from about 15-21 who join these regulated, serious band corps from the US and Canada (that's why it's international, you see). This isn't your average high school's marching band. However, basically, it's a band geek festival, and since I've got my very own personal recovering band geek we had to go.
Honestly, it wasn't all that bad. It wasn't bad weather and the corps (it is gauche to refer to them as bands) were OK. I think some of them take themselves way too seriously. There was a group that had a sort of whimsical Irish theme and flag twirlers in little step dancing costumes, and they still acted like they had rods inserted from shpincter to cranium.
Mentioning the flag twirlers (I ought to know what they're actually called, my brother was one for his high school last year), the sabres and rifles they use ought to be in outright violation every single No Tolerance Weapons Policy ever created. If it's grounds for suspension to bring a butter knife to school in your lunch, or to draw pictures of weapons on your folders (both of these are actual incidents), why are these obvious weapons still acceptable?
I'm not a fan of these ridiculous policies, I simply bring into question why "No Tolerance" doesn't actually mean what it's supposed to, and why it is continually used in select situations that do not call for its use.
In my 7th grade English class we re-enacted scenes from A Christmas Carol. My group had the Scrooge and Marley scene and wanted to make things as "correct" as three girls could, so we asked the English teacher whether we could put Marley in a chain. She agreed and I obtained a chain from the drama teacher.
The day of the performance, the English teacher caught me pulling the chain out of my desk. She and I had an extremely bad relationship in the first place- everything I ever did was grounds for expulsion. Yep, this too. So I got to go down to the office and explain that, not only had the English teacher approved the chain a week ago, I had obtained it from the drama teacher! The principal was forced to acknowledge that I could not possibly be in the wrong, having gotten permission from two different educators at the school, but that the chain was "clearly a violation of the policy".
Our Marley wore the only other thing we could find, a pink ribbon.