Under the Spotlight

Graduation didn't affect me the way it affects a lot of people. For most seniors in high school, I suppose graduation would have been the highlight of the year. The end of the road. The beginning of the rest of their lives. As far as graduations are concerned, I guess mine was a typical one. We had to hold it in the gym because it had rained the day before and the ground was soaked. The choir, of which I was a member, sang the alma mater and one other song that made my mother cry. I went the wrong way as I exited the stage, and had to cover by hugging the assistant band director—who I never actually liked. But for me, high school had come to an end about five months prior to that day.

It was at the end of my last season in marching band, at our annual Band Banquet. The actual banquet is about as exciting as it sounds. There’s a pot luck supper in the school cafeteria and a cake with all the senior members’ names written in black icing (which bleeds terribly, so the names aren’t legible.) The special part of the evening is the “senior spotlights," which take place after about two hours worth of mind-dulling achievement awards.

Senior spotlights are almost self-explanatory. Every senior that wants to participate in senior spotlights pre-records a speech. Then, on the night of the banquet, each person takes turns sitting on a stool in the middle of the pitch black gym while a spotlight shines down on them. Usually seniors record a few jokes about things they did while they were in band and then thank their friends for all the good times. People cry a lot—I'm sure you understand why it was so enjoyable.

I started working on my speech in the ninth grade. What can I say? I like to document things. When it was finally time to record my spotlight I had either lost what I’d been working on or it no longer applied. So I procrastinated writing the speech for a week and then finally wrote something that didn’t offer the slightest hint of what I was actually feeling. I recorded it, and I went home that night and was so upset I couldn't sleep.
Marching band had been a huge part of my life for four years, next in line only to family. The way I felt about it coming to an end wasn’t something I could express in a couple of punch lines. I stayed up all night writing a new speech, and first thing in the morning I recorded over my old one.

The night of the banquet arrived and I was a complete mess—which people expected of me because they’d known me for four years. I had an industrial-size box of Kleenex and hadn’t even bothered with mascara. Mine was the last senior spotlight of the class of 2003. And even though I was close to sobbing by the end of it, I knew what I'd said had made a difference to the people that heard it.

It was the easiest and the hardest thing I'd ever done. Funny enough, while I thanked the head band director (who I did like) and a few of the band chaperones I was closest to, it wasn't them that I concentrated on in my speech, it was my family. My brother and sister had stuck by me through four years of horrific practice sessions and a hundred sink-fulls of cosmetic glitter. I had given my parents credit for making me who I was, and in the same breath I had let them go.

I played alto saxophone in the marching band. I wasn't a Valedictorian or a Class President. The day I graduated I didn't have the opportunity to thank the people dearest to me for pushing me and supporting me through my high school experience. What I did have was a cold night in December, four minutes in the spotlight, and a lot of Kleenex.