Marching Band Parent Hats

Marching band season runs from a parking lot in August to a stadium in November, and the parents are there for every minute of it. They own the folding wagon. They have moved a sousaphone across three counties. They know which gate the buses use at every stadium in the region and they have opinions about all of them. Everything else in the band merch aisle is a school name on a blank shirt. This is the part nobody prints: that marching band is a sport and the argument was settled years ago, that the band won even if the team did not, that the sousaphone costs more than the vehicle transporting it, and that a sentence beginning THIS ONE TIME AT BAND CAMP has been getting finished differently by band kids since 1999. BAND MOM, BAND DAD, BAND CAMP and DRUMLINE are set as collegiate arches in Archivo Black and Alfa Slab One, because the arch is the marching arts' own typography and it belongs on a hat in the stands. Cranberry, navy, black, spruce, khaki and white, with gold and navy thread that reads like brass under Friday night lights.