Making the band

Oh, I'm a mean mom this week. Ohhhhh, I'm a meanie. This is the week my daughter starts Band Camp, a boot-camp-like two-week ordeal designed to whip freshmen in shape for high-school marching band. And I've got to think that most of the kids showing up each day for this abuse, many of them the second or third sibling or even the second generation in their families doing band duty, are at least semi-excited about marching onto that football field in uniform. Okay, maybe a few of them are getting pushed by their parents to give it a try. My daughter is probably not the only one moaning and groaning and wishing she didn't have to go, probably not the only one whose mom keeps cooing "Just try it. Just do your best." But since she's the only one I"m personally pushing, she's the one I feel guilty over.

You gotta love the way kids think, though. She was complaining about the lap-running and calisthenics she had to do all day, and how it was too much work, and I told her, as I so often do, that if she doesn't have to be in band she has to pick something else to be involved with. "Cross-country," she suggested. Yeah, now there's a less strenuous solution.