12. (Left a brush; brought something better back.)

Today, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to talk about people.

I just finished up a week-long excursion to the southern-ish tip of Florida, in order to watch the Orange Bowl (a horrifying defeat, which I will not discuss further here). Throughout this week, I spent pretty much all my time with members of the same 35 people (the drumline, that is, which I won't directly discuss further here).

It's nice when you meet someone you already know. The end of this week-long trip was spent spending 32 hours on a bus driving back to the Holy Land of Our Fathers that is Oklahoma. A good portion of this trip was spent talking to a group of people (who I shall refer to as The Rookies--that is, first-year members of the line--I'm a third-year myself), among them a certain young woman whom I had danced with on New Year's while riding the bus to Miami (in another 32 hour journey).

I won't use her name. In fact, I pretty much won't ever use anyone's names when I write in here.

Anyways, this girl has been around for about 5 months or so, since the beginning of the marching season. So, as such, I've spoken to her once or twice; but since she's in the pit (off the field) and I'm in the battery (on the field) there's been little more than that.

Well, on the way home from the beautiful hell that was Miami, we got to spend quite some time hanging out on the bus. Suffice to say, I really, really regret not making an effort to get to know her better, because today's bus-ride was officially the end of the 2004 marching season, and more-than-likely I won't get to see her much before the end of the summer.

This doesn't just go for the girl. It goes for several other members of The Rookies as well, as I got to sit near a bunch of them on the bus and to be honest I wish I had been closer to the lot of them throughout the season.

Oh well, it'll be better when the next season starts, most likely.

So I said I was going to talk about family...

These people, the members of the line, young and old, past and present, are, in so, so, so, so many ways, my family. Not the same as my family-family, but they're not just friends. They're like my brothers and sisters in so many ways.

Family doesn't need blood. Family doesn't even need closeness. There are people on the line of whom I could count the words spoken between us on my hands. And yet, those people are just as much family as the people who were Rookies when I was.

I really just don't know how to explain it, to be honest. And I just felt like getting that offa my chest.

I'm back from Miami, by the way.