Regionals & Bobby Bird - Part 2

The bus ride back from Tooele.

I was sitting right at the front of the bus with Whitney, Alice, and Annie.

Mr. Taylor also sat at the front for some of the bus ride, too, but he went buzzing around and chatting with everyone else on the bus, too. He's really a great teacher. He's nice and friendly and gets along really well with both kids and adults.

I just remember he was sitting so that he was practically in the middle of the isle, and all of a sudden, it seems like Alice, Annie, Whitney and I just kind of all looked over at once to see him looking at papers. It didn't take more than a few seconds to realize those were our scoring sheets from the performance.

I think he kind of knew that we were staring, and he turned around and was just casually like, "Hello."

We just looked at him and I was like, "So...?"

"What?"

"What'd we get?"

I feel like he was trying to decide how to let us down lightly. "Three one minuses." We then asked what we had to get to qualify for state, and he said two ones. It was a little disappointing, but Mr. Taylor told us he was very proud of that score. It was good enough for us, having Mr. Taylor be proud.

Later, however, I learned that one of the judges isn't exactly fair game for us.

This judge's name is Bobby Bird.

Not that the other judges probably weren't just as harsh.

The next time we met in band class, Mr. Taylor talked about it. He said that we probably had higher expectations than the other schools because the judges have heard our bands play multiple times and so they knew what we could've been capable of. I guess it made us feel better, and worse. I don't know. It made me feel like they were hearing things. I don't know, I got over it.

We listened to the comments two of the three judges made in band class two classes ago. He wouldn't let us listen to all three because it would take all class to do it. Of course, the one person he didn't let us listen to was Bobby Bird.

Bobby Bird.

It makes me so mad and kind of laugh at the same time. I've heard rumors that he gives us scores just bad enough to not let us go to state because we're too young. Mr. Taylor told us we wouldn't want to listen to Bobby Bird because he just keeps talking and stuff like that. I can imagine how hard he cracked down on us and I think Mr. Taylor thought if we listened to him our self-confidence would be destroyed. I wouldn't know. I never listened to it.

I like to think that the bird is Bobby Bird and the fish is our band. Credit to WallpapersWide!

We did hear the first few seconds of his recording, however. In a very low, and kind of creepy voice, we just hear this super scary, "Hello, Chris. Sorry, this is Bobby Bird."

But it sounded like some sort of secret assassin trying to pass a message to our band teacher. It was really funny. The whole class was laughing.

So that's our experience with Bobby Bird. It's sad, funny, and kind of annoying, right?

Oh well.

Rule #20 is doing your best no matter what. And don't listen to the stupid ones that give you bad scores for no reason.