Perhaps I should explain.

Aficionados of football regale one another with yarns about the outstanding run, pass, kick, sack, block, etc., they recall. Basketball fans delight in stories of slam-dunks, sky hooks and desperation shots that went in from the back court. Baseball fans challenge one another with tales of no-hitters, grand slams and legendary nachos and beer.

Ex-marching band directors remember the sounds of stadiums filled with music, thunderous crowds on their feet and...the best flanking movements - turns - they've ever seen.

Tyler, Texas. I grew up in the town, moved away, went to college and returned there to teach band at one of its six junior highs. I was only the second band director the school had ever had, which seemed okay to me, since it was only the second band I'd ever taught. A perfect match, as it were.

A list of mistakes I made there would fill this essay twice over; a list of the things I learned would double that.

But this isn't about what I did there; it's about a girl, her flute, and a marching maneuver I'll never forget.

Late each fall when the weather gets cold and damp enough a marching contest is held. At least, that seems to be the criterion; I recall few marching contests held on warm, dry days. The basic requirement seems to be a solid week of downpours immediately preceding the blessed event.

So it was that year. It wasn't anything so terribly out of the ordinary - just the typical late monsoon with which October welcomes November in East Texas. It had rained for days, and it rained that morning.

This was in the days before Astroturf. In fact, the contest took place in Hallsville, Texas (halfway between Diana and Karnack), and they're still in the days before Astroturf there. They may be in the days before grass. The football field looked like Waterloo the day after. Or lower Ararat, when the Ark beached. We're talking true S & M here - Serious Mud.

Our band uniforms were de rigueur for upper-middle-class junior high bands of the era: five-alarm orange windbreakers and ties with lily white shirts, pants and shoes. You could hear us even when we weren't playing.

Her name was Sherri Nolan: ninth grade flute player unextraordinaire. A biography of her might have been titled Three Years in Last Chair. Well, not quite. Occasionally one of the others in her section would be absent for a playing test, and Sherri would move up a notch or two. But a powerhouse player she wasn't. Or scholar. She consistently brought home nautical grades - right about C level. Neither the best nor the brightest, but a pleasant child, pretty happy with life in general, a sort of Everyman with bubble gum.

The rain stopped about 1/2 hour before the band went on, so Sherri's flute and the other woodwinds weren't at risk from the moisture.

They took the field with zest, if not polish. Sixteen bars into the performance the trousers and shoes looked like the "before" side of a detergent commercial. The band was slipping and sliding - the mud made treacherous footing for our trademark high-step. Most of the kids made reasonable, logical adjustments - they toned down the step, eased through maneuvers, rounded off their turns. Survival in a vertical mode became the priority.

For everyone except Sherri.

She couldn't play the flute very well, her grades were barely passing, she wasn't the most popular kid in school; but, oh, could she ever march. And she was in peak form that day. Her step was high, her toes pointed, her shoulders flew around corners. Every turn was sharper than the last. No mere slippery surface was going to make her back down from giving us all a quickstep seminar in marching, and a graduate lesson in life.

Most of the movements in the routine were to left or to right - 90-degree changes. But the last major move called for the band to execute a to-the-rear - a 180-degree course reversal. Sherri dug in her toe, drove home the turn and spun like a whirling dervish on speed. Witnesses swear there was an audible "pop" from the vacuum she created with her turn.

Sherri made the turn successfully, as did the rest of the band, The flow of orange and white (and gray-brown and gray-black) quickly reversed itself entirely - except for a small silver glint that briefly flashed as it soared through its unintended trajectory.

Flutes come in three pieces: head, middle and foot joints. They are held together by strict tolerances of their bores - less than .001". They fit snugly, even tightly. It takes a relatively strong and quite deliberate twisting motion to take them apart.

We didn't have a seismic counter on Sherri that day. No one can quantize just how sharply she turned. But the force of that to-the-rear dismantled her flute. The foot joint of the instrument failed to negotiate the turn with her, and carved its own unswerving ballistic path through the air and into the mud beyond the band.

There's not much permanence in a marching band. You memorize the music, you learn the routine, you do the show. Then it's on to the next show or indoors to get ready for Christmas. Ob-la-di, ob-la-da...

But there is something eternal in a gift fully given. Taking a chance on a slippery surface can throw a flute or a universe apart. And can last forever as a reminder of what it's like to give our best.

And God saw that it was good.