Rehearsing drill until your legs burn.

Doing the show until you are positively sick of the band director saying "let's do it just one more time."

Loading and unloading instruments, carrying flags and props on and off the field with the timing of a military offensive, day after day after day.

Ice to relieve bruises on wrists, foreheads, ankles.

Swollen lips.

Doing pushups.

Standing at attention for five more minutes than you can bear.

Sunburn.

Wanting to sell your soul for five more minutes of sleep.

Flags in the face, rifles in the ribs.

Wanting to give it all up and join the chess team.

Hearing the show music in your sleep.

Sectionals.

Heartburn.

Heartbreak.

Drumming on everything in sight.

Tossing anything you can pick up. Running laps because someone else was late, again.

Realizing colorguard looked a lot easier than it is.

Doing more push-ups.

Wondering what happened to your life.

Eating dinner in the car while changing clothes and doing homework.

Lost shoes and lost mouthpieces.

Blood blisters on your palms.

Long underwear under your uniform and icy wind in your face.

Learning the fine art of sleeping on a bus.

Tears and teasing.

Learning you have 200 new brothers and sisters who stick by you through thick and thin.

Knowing you have 300 new parents who will cheer for you, no matter what.

Laughing at each other's jokes and learning more about yourself than you knew.

Doing more push-ups.

Thinking the show will never work.

And then, finally, it comes all together and you have achieved perfection, drumming your hands off and playing your brains out and tossing higher than the sky. A slice of time in a stadium when everyone cheers and your mom cries and pictures get taken at once, just once, you have the world in your hands. And the band marches out of the stadium and down the street, always together whether it's success or not, and you know by the feeling in your heart it doesn't get any better than this. And you know if your director asked you to turn around and "do it just one more time, a little better," you would.

from, somewhere on the internet