How Music has Helped Me Part Two

In my previous post, I talked about how my mom used music to help me regain my language skills at age two after the onset of my autistic characteristics.  In this post I am going to talk about how music helped me a second time, when I entered high school.  In this case, instead of helping me cognitively, music helped me socially.

Entering high school is a nerve-racking experience for anyone.  After my horrible time in middle school, I did not have high expectations for high school.  I started pre-camp for marching band in the first weeks of July.  At first, I went into marching band thinking it would be just another activity I wouldn't like. I was surprised to find that I really enjoyed marching band, more than anything else I had in a long time.  July 2002 is about the same time I got my tonsils removed, so I missed most of pre-camp that year.  When I got back, I couldn't really play my brand new clarinet I had bought from a pawn shop, but I did sit through sectionals and talked with the other band members.

I was told that I made a good decision by playing in band: I found out where the girls were.  I was the only boy out of fourteen clarinet players.  None of the band members knew what my middle school experience had been like.  I was just another freshman to them.  I remember being told that I was one of the hardest working freshmen.  I had never had a peer compliment me like that before.  It was at that point when I left middle school behind me completely and became a freshmen "clarinetee."  Marching band really helped me socially through high school.  As each year progressed, I met more people and became more social.  Apart from the musical experience, I really gained some life-long friends.  I quoted in the school, yearbook my junior year of high school that marching band was the best thing that ever happened to me.  It was.  It really was.