(Un)Lone Bone
Audio version now available.
Middle school is brutal. In all the states where I have lived, both growing up across the Midwest and East Coast, and as an adult in the Midwest and Mountain West, middle school is three grades: sixth, seventh, and eighth. Elementary school is kindergarten through fifth, and high school is ninth through twelfth. I am convinced that middle school is the shortest experience because neither the parents nor the students could survive more than three years being subjected to the cauldron of hormones, body odor, and curse words. The gymnasium during a middle school dance smells like the violent collision of B.O. and Axe Body Spray. If the only risks to unsupervised middle school dances are teen pregnancy and burning down the gym, it might be worth rolling the dice to spare the parent and teacher chaperones from the exposure trauma.
I once witnessed a conversation between seventh graders that had the word fuck injected into every single sentence. It was as though if you left an f-bomb out of any comment you would be immediately pummeled and dragged out of the cafeteria left for dead bleeding in the hallway. Context and grammar were unimportant. “Can I get some of your tater fuck tots?” “Yeah, if I can fuck get a bite of that corndog.” It didn’t matter if it fit, as long as it was in there.
A few decades before that conversation, I played the trombone in my middle school marching band. Half way through sixth grade, I moved from a middle school with a robust music program across the Midwest to a new school where band was for geeks and losers. At the new school, my father nicknamed me “The Lone Bone,” and still delights at telling the story of the band director giving me the second-chair sheet music even though I was the only trombone in the band. I didn’t last long enough to see if I could earn a promotion to first chair. As a seventh grader, and the new kid in school, I didn’t have the self-confidence to follow whatever musical passion I had, and I dropped out of band to shake free from the stigma. I decided to go be mediocre at sports instead of mastering an artistic craft. My middle school experience predated Axe Body Spray, but no perfume could have fuck covered the putrid fermunda-cheese stench of that decision anyway.
My wife, Sheri, and I saw seven bands perform live music last weekend. On Saturday night, we watched our son’s band, Heliotrope, open for a band from Oklahoma City called Stepmom in a Denver dive bar that features a lot of live music. On Sunday afternoon, we sat on a grassy hill for City Park Jazz where we watched a neighbor’s son lead the trumpet section for the headliner, Guerrilla Fanfare, after a series of other brass bands played. I mention three of the bands by name not as a form of free promotion, but because it is unlikely that I can do the musical experience justice in written words, so I am hopeful that the thoughtfulness and uniqueness of their band names will serve as an indication of the talent and the creativity of the music.
When teased about being the second-chair lone bone, or their personal-humiliation equivalent, these artists kept going.
I used to have a boss who was an avid golfer, and each Monday morning when I asked him how he played over the weekend, he gave me a hole-by-hole rundown in excruciating detail. I am not going to provide you a detailed rundown of the seven performances we witnessed last weekend because unlike the situation with me and my boss, you are not in the cubicle next to me, and you can, in fact, extract yourself from a painfully boring story. I will spare you six hours of details, and skip right to the part where my eyes welled up with tears.
At the end of the brass band extravaganza, Guerrilla Fanfare invited all of the jazz-fest performers back on stage to jam with them. GuFa’s band leader crawled out from under his marching tuba and directed dozens of musicians who had never before played together (that’s right, no rehearsal) with incredible passion and enthusiasm. The jam included professional musicians, college music majors, and high school kids just starting out. In what seemed a baffling feat to a talentless witness who dropped trombone in the seventh grade, they sounded fantastic as solo after solo blasted out from under the pavilion roof–trumpets and tubas, saxophones and xylophones, and yes…about a dozen trombones who surely felt every conceivable emotional way other than alone.
A few tears streamed gently down my cheeks as I smiled and cheered and clapped until my palms hurt. Listen, I went to this brass band concert to show support for my neighbor’s kid, and because I was promised a barbeque picnic under a clear blue Colorado sky. I did not expect to have my emotions stirred or for my eyeballs to leak.
What got me was not the quality of the music, it was the quality of the people making music.
They were there for each other in a way that is in critically short supply in our culture and society today. Young and old, incredibly talented and squeaky and fumbling. When our society is divided like never before in my lifetime, men and women, boys and girls, found a love of something around which they could unite, and they brought a couple of thousand concert goers along for the ride.
If you tease anyone who is coloring outside the lines in pursuit of something that brings them joy, fuck you and your tatter tots. We aren’t put on this earth to chase money and power and to keep each other down. If you are the proverbial lone bone, look around. If you search hard enough, you will find your tribe of bones. When you do, put on some Axe Body Spray and celebrate with your people.
On a weekend when a statistician got fired for accurately reporting predictably unpleasant stats, here is a fact that is 100% accurate. Whatever your genre, music wins every single time. And in Denver, Colorado, on the first weekend in August, 2025, music got another big W for the pride and confidence of a lot of talented and aspiring musicians. Whatever tune you are playing, even if it differs from the cacophony around you, I have one piece of advice.
Bone on, my friends. You are not alone.
This essay is from the “Underlying Issues Series.” If you forging a different path that includes leaving alcohol behind, please consider joining us in SHOUT Sobriety where you’ll never feel alone.
10 Comments
Yes! Great story, great lesson! I also played the “lone tone” (baritone). Matt, your writing is fantastic, keep it up!!!
Thank you, Greg! Your encouragement means a lot.
Oh this hit home. I too quit clarinet in middle school. I too am in awe of musicians and deeply regret my inability to be part of that experience. If I could turn back the clock I would whisper to that awkward girl and tell her to be herself. And screw what others think!
Following the advice you would whisper is exactly what we need to find peace, freedom, and confidence. Thanks for relating, Tara!
“Brass Kicks Ass!!” I found my husband and life-long best friends through marching band and will forever thank my lucky stars that my education included music. I have always happily been a band geek… and it’s true, what happens at band camp, stays at band camp! Music is a great human joy and bonding experience. Great article!
The college kids were the Rowdy Brass Band from Colorado Mesa University, and I think they would love your slogan that brass kicks ass!
I wasn’t into band. I loved choir class. I love music. I love to sing and l love to dance to my favorite 80’s music. Music is very uplifting and can take you to another place, especially when you are feeling down. I love to go to a parade to listen to the bands from Middle School and High School. I do have to say Middle school was horrible. Boys and Girls can be so cruel to each other.
Music really is special. Thanks for sharing your experience, Sonya!
Clever band names…I like Heliotrope especially, “turning toward the sun”. I love to learn from your gift for noticing, and experiencing, the beauty of connection. Music connects. It makes people feel.
When I was in grade school I had an art teacher who walked up to my sketch and asked me incredulously, “What is this?” (I am an artist but not abstract in any way, so I didn’t know how to answer her). Guess I must’ve been going “outside the lines.” She took my paper, ripped it up in front of the entire class, and threw it into the trash. I decided not that long ago, I’m not such a bad artist and I’m gonna keep painting. To music! Fuck ‘em, in the words of a middle schooler.
That teacher should consider a profession far from children. Keep going outside the lines, Angela!