When I was ten years old and in the fifth grade, I started playing in the school band. My mom and I went to the information meeting and I had a look at all the available instruments, but from the word go my heart was set on the trombone. At that point I had no deep love of brass bands or bass lines, but I did have a powerful crush on a boy who played the trombone. He was three years ahead of me in school, so there was no immediate benefit to me in choosing the same instrument, but I’ve always been a careful planner. It occurred to me that if I stuck with it, when the time came that we were both in high school at the same time — he a senior and I a freshman — I would be able to sit near him during band class.

It didn’t work out the way I’d hoped, because the following summer we moved to the next town over and the object of my adoration was forever lost to me. By that time, however, I’d spent an entire school year learning all about slide positions and spit valves, and I was well and truly hooked. I played trombone in various school bands — concert band, jazz band, pep band, marching band — all the way through high school. One year I added baritone horn to my repertoire, playing it in concert band and trombone in jazz band. That year my first and last class periods of the day were band, and I loved it. I think it was the best schedule I ever planned.

In the spirit of honesty, I should admit that I wasn’t especially good. I was competent, for sure, but the high notes proved a skill I never fully mastered, and I was a lazy student given more to forging my practice cards than actually earning my mom’s signature on them. But man, I really did love it. Most of my best memories from high school are related, in one way or another, to band.

Anyone who’s ever played in any sort of band can tell you of the thrill and satisfaction of performing a piece that comes out just right, everyone doing his or her bit to make the whole something altogether greater than the sum of its parts. Jazz band was my favorite, because it was a small group and we played such cool music. Even though many of us had very different lives and interests outside the bandroom, inside that room we were a unit reaching for the same goal, and when it was good it was so good. I am positive that I’m not the only one of us who even today hears In the Mood and thinks instantly of Katie on the alto sax or Tyler on the trumpet (he had a silver trumpet — oh, how I coveted that thing).

I donated my trombone to the Salvation Army before I made the move to Sweden, and before that it was only on rare occasions that I pulled it out to play. Lately, though, I’m thinking it might be time to scour the second-hand markets for a replacement. If nothing else, I could get it out from time to time and breathe in that sweet, glorious smell of valve oil and brass. There’s just nothing like it.