Well this is sad: Two tour buses of High School Band members crash, two dead

I was a bando in high school. For those that might not know the term, it means I was a member of the Estancia High School Marching Band. I played the baritone horn, and a little sousaphone, during my 4 years in high school. One of the only things I miss from those years is the camaraderie of the group. We were family, in a way. I still kind of keep in touch only with those I knew during those years.

In all, we were a family: We fought each other and for each other. We loved one another as family and more. We weren't the greatest players but we didn't care. Our director, Linda, was both stern and kind. While those may be opposites in a normal world, in the bando-verse it means she pushed us to be the best we could be, but not to the point we hated her. Sadly, after I graduated in 1998, some rather unsavory elements (read: holier-than-thou students/parents) pushed the wrong buttons and Linda retired some years later. All in all though it was good times while I was there.

So you may be asking yourself where I'm going with this. Well, each year of band we would do what we called Tour. Tour was basically a gigantic field trip. In my years we normally went to San Fransisco (one year, my senior, was Las Vegas), when to a competition or something, then came home. It was a week long adventure of marching, playing games on the ride there, pulling pranks. We even had a tradition of stealing a road sign, preferably one that wasn't going to cause traffic accidents, to take back to the band room.

These two points, the traffic and the bus rides, brings me to a sad story today. Two bus-loads of students from a Missouri high school collided with a pickup and a semi-trailer. Two were killed: The pickup driver and one student. My heartfelt remorse over the loss of both the driver, Daniel Schantz, and the student Jessica Brinker and her family who have now lost a loved one. When you are in a group like that, even in a big city (these students were from a town of about 600 or so from what I gather), I can only imagine the pain this tragic accident has caused.

In the end we, where I went, were family. Though we never had this tragedy I would never wish it upon my worst enemies. It would make those enemies even madder at me than normal.