no marching band at private school for athletic and well-adjusted

BY ELIZABETH BASTOS

PEAS VALLEY, MD -- The Orrfield Gully School in Peas Valley yesterday became the first private school in the state to outlaw marching band.

"We'll allow a drum corps," said the Headmaster, B.C. McClarendon, Class of '48. "But that's as far as we feel it's healthy for our student body to go."

He added that Orrfield alumni become captains of industry, finance, law, and medicine because of the school's solid football program, "not because they studied the glockenspiel or tuba."

"What I've learned through re-education is that the tuba is a ridiculous instrument. The place for it is at Oktoberfest, in an oompah band,” said Chloe Van Sant, former faculty liaison to the marching band. She now heads up the school's recycling program and is, she says, glad for the break from incessant rehearsals in the rain in the dark wooded area behind the school's incinerator where she had been forced to relocate practice after the band was kicked off campus -- before being outright outlawed.

"The only place for low self-esteem is the art classrooms, and we still grudgingly offer art," Patrice Long, Dean of Parent Re-Education and Relations said. In Long's opinion it's misguided. "Some parents still want kids to draw, paint, and 'think outside the box,' but the box at Orrfield is great."

Elizabeth Bastos is a stay-at-home mother of two under five. Before having kids, she worked in corporate and foundation relations, and before that at the Museum of Science, Boston. She moonlights writing in the very early mornings before everyone gets up and wants things. In the little free time she has, Elizabeth makes complicated French patries to tempt her kids into doing what she asks. Her work has appeared in Terrain.org, The Delmarva Review, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Tar River Poetry, and the Baltimore City Paper. Beginning in May, Elizabeth will have her own column on errant parent. Visit her blog: Goody Bastos. Elizabeth can be reached at: elizabeth.bastos@gmail.com.