Carefully Orchestrated Musical Mayhem

I am in band in tenth grade and at one of our school concerts, right at the last song of the set, one of the students comes up to the band teacher. She is one of our percussionists, but she broke an arm and can’t play.

Student #1:
“Mrs. [Teacher], there’s a call for you in the office.”

Teacher:
“Why are you telling me this? It can wait.”

Student #1:
“Mr. [Principal] said you couldn’t come to the phone, but they said it’s about your daughter.”

The teacher apologizes profusely to the audience and steps down to go into the school and take the call, which leaves several parents very upset. After about thirty seconds of waiting around and people grumbling angrily, someone speaks up.

Student #2:
“I don’t want to have to be here any longer than I need to! Come on!”

The first student stepped up, picked up the teacher’s baton, and conducted us through the last song of the night. But, instead of sitting around professionally, we were goofing off. If we weren’t playing, we were throwing things at each other, such as paper or erasers we had laying around. I even got into a “sword fight” with the other girl on marimba with our mallets. It generated a lot of laughs from the parents. We got through the song, and the first student set the baton back down and went to sit down about ten seconds before the teacher came back to explain to the audience what had happened.

Everything about it was rehearsed, from the “phone call” to the goofing off.