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I love Batman. I know, you probably already know that about me. My favorite Batman is Michael Keaton. But it’s not just his portrayal of Batman and Bruce Wayne that I love. I love Tim Burton’s art style and direction and I absolutely love Danny Elfman’s musical score. But my favorite piece of that score is not one that you’ll find in either Batman or Batman Returns. It’s a version that is only found here in Oklahoma each fall on the grounds surrounding the Palace on the Prairie.
It’s played by the trumpet section of the Pride of Oklahoma Marching Band which for the last four years has included my son Colby. His time with the band came to an end last season, and today’s lesson comes from the time I almost missed it.
Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday, this is episode 706, “The Last Warmup.” I’m Darrell Darnell, I think “I’m Batman” the unarguably the best line from any Batman film, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.
I love watching my son perform.
Four years. Twenty-six home games, warmup circles, tailgate concerts, and pregame marches. Four years of watching Colby do something he loved as a member of the Pride of Oklahoma, the University of Oklahoma’s marching band. And every single time, from his very first game as a freshman to what I knew would be his last, I soaked up every second of it like a man who understood just how fast it all goes.
Today’s story is about the last time I saw him perform in person. And honestly, it’s less about Colby and more about me. And the moment I nearly let my emotions hijack one of the most meaningful days of my life.
When Colby entered the band as a freshman, Kari and I were fortunate enough to attend every home game but one. His sophomore year looked much the same. But his junior and senior years were different. The Sooners had made the move to the SEC, ticket prices had climbed accordingly, and our business was going through a stretch where every dollar was seemingly spent before it came in. We could only swing two games that final season.
We chose wisely. An early non-conference game with affordable tickets, and then the final home game of the regular season, an afternoon game against the LSU Tigers. That one we designated as our Christmas gift to each other. No wrapped boxes under the tree. Just the three of us at the Palace on the Prairie watching Colby one last time.
As you can imagine, emotions were already running high going into that day, and I’m not talking about the game. I’m talking about the feeling every parent knows when their child is closing a chapter. When something beautiful is winding down and you’re standing there trying to figure out how to hold all of it at once. It wasn’t just Kari and me feeling it, either. Colby felt the weight of the moment. And so did his sister, Addi. All four of us walked into that day with the same quiet mission: take in everything, miss nothing, make it count.
The game was a mid-afternoon kickoff, so we’d planned to head to campus around 11:30 that morning, relaxed, unhurried, ready to savor the day. That plan evaporated around 11am when Colby messaged us to let us know he’d be participating in the Walk of Champions.
If you’re not familiar, the Walk of Champions is the ceremony where the football team arrives on game day — buses rolling in, players stepping off, making their way into the stadium through a corridor of fans. The band is part of the experience, and now so was our son.
Of course we wanted to be there for that too.
So we scrambled. Jumped in the car, navigated to Norman, found parking, and then power-walked nearly a mile to get to the Walk of Champions location. We made it — barely — and even got a few minutes to talk to Colby before the buses arrived. It was one of those small, reflective moments in an otherwise rushed morning, and we were grateful to experience it.
Then the buses pulled up, the crowd surged with energy, and that’s when Addi decided she wanted to get closer to the front. She wanted an up close view of a certain Sooner quarterback she finds quite attractive. Fair enough. We agreed she’d meet us right back at our spot when it was over, and then we’d all head over together to watch the band warm up.
The warmup circle is one of my absolute favorite parts of game day.
About two hours before kickoff, the band breaks into sections by instrument and fans out across the northwest end of campus. Each section finds their space, and the crowd is invited to gather around and watch. There’s something almost sacred about it. The energy is building. The music is starting to fill the air. And for the trumpets, it culminates in something special.
They invite the crowd inside the circle, turn inward to face the people huddled inside them, and play. It’s the kind of moment that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. It’s the kind of ear drum blasting, face melting experience that brings an expression of awe to your face and makes you appreciate the talent of those young musicians.
After the individual warmups, the whole band assembles near a tailgating area for a concert, then marches in parade formation toward the stadium. It’s a whole experience. Kari and I love every single second of it, and we were about to miss it……..
After the Walk of Champions wrapped up, we waited. Addi sent a text asking where we were. We told her — same spot, right next to the big screen showing games from around the country. We waited some more. Five minutes. Then ten. Cell reception in a crowd that size is always a gamble, calls drop, texts delay. When we finally got a location ping through, my stomach dropped.
She was halfway across campus. She hadn’t come back to find us. She’d gone straight to watch the band warm up and left us standing there.
So while we’d been waiting for her, she’d been watching the warmup circle. The one we’d been trying to get to. The last one we’d ever see Colby perform in.
I was not happy.
Kari and I put our heads down and moved. We covered that distance as fast as two people in a crowd of thousands reasonably can. And with every step, my frustration grew. I replayed the whole thing in my head. We had one clear plan. Meet back at the same spot. It wasn’t complicated. And now, because of that broken agreement, we were going to miss part of Colby’s final warmup circle. His last one. This was supposed to be the day we missed nothing.
By the time we arrived, I had already decided exactly what I was going to say.
Addi turned around when she saw us. Before she could even smile or wave, she caught my face. She knew immediately. “What did I do?” she asked.
The band was playing full volume. I had to raise my voice to be heard. And I did. Right there, in the middle of the warmup circle, surrounded by other families and fans and the sound of trumpets, I let her know — loudly — how upset I was, how she’d left us waiting, and how we’d missed the beginning because of it.
She yelled back that she’d tried to find us and couldn’t, and she didn’t want to miss anything so she made a decision. I yelled back that her decision made us miss it. It went back and forth for a minute before she turned away to watch the rest of the warmup. I turned to watch too, still angry.
After the warmup ended, Colby made his way over. He talked to Addi. He talked to Kari. He didn’t come talk to me. Obviously, I noticed. As we walked toward the tailgating area, Kari gently pulled me aside.
Now, I want you to know something about my wife. She is one of the most gracious, level-headed, emotionally intelligent people I have ever known. She doesn’t come at me sideways. She doesn’t pile on. She waits for the right moment and then she speaks truth in the most disarming way. And she typically doesn’t need a lot of words.
She told me, quietly and directly, that I had embarrassed her. That I had embarrassed Addi. That I had embarrassed Colby. And that I had overreacted.
That was it. No lecture. No lengthy breakdown of everything I’d done wrong. Just the truth, delivered with love and without cruelty.
Proverbs 17:10 says, “A rebuke impresses a discerning person more than a hundred lashes a fool.” That’s Kari. She didn’t need to lash me a hundred times. One well-placed, honest rebuke was enough. Because she trusted me to be discerning enough to hear it.
And slowly, I did.
I watched Colby play at the tailgate concert. I watched him move through the crowd with his section, laughing with his bandmates, doing what he’d spent four years getting good at. And as I watched, I started running the tape back in my head.
Not the tape of what Addi did wrong. The tape of what I did.
And that’s when it hit me.
“Crap,” I thought to myself. “I just created an episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday.”
Here’s what I learned.
Did Addi leave us at the Walk of Champions without a text or a heads-up and cause us to miss part of the warmup? Yes. Was I justified in being frustrated about that? Honestly, yes, I think so. We had a clear plan. She changed it without telling us.
But here’s the thing about being justified. Being justified in your feelings doesn’t automatically make your response the right one.
Proverbs 12:16 says it plainly: “Fools show their annoyance at once, but the prudent overlook an insult.”
That verse doesn’t say your frustration is wrong. It says that the wise person knows how to hold it, sit with it, and choose the right moment — or sometimes, choose not to unleash it at all. The fool can’t wait. The fool needs everyone to know, right now, exactly how wronged he feels. And standing in the middle of that warmup circle, shouting over the sound of trumpets, missing the very thing I’d rushed to see because I was too busy being angry to watch it. That was about as foolish as it gets.
I’ve thought a lot about what I actually lost in those minutes. It wasn’t just the start of the warmup circle. It was the spirit of the whole morning. All four of us had walked into that day with the same intention. Soak it all in, miss nothing, be fully present. And I became the one who couldn’t do it. Not because of what Addi did, but because of how I chose to respond to it.
Emotions are tricky that way. They compound. By the time we arrived at the warmup circle that day, I wasn’t just carrying frustration about being late. I was carrying the weight of every feeling I’d brought into that morning. The pride, the sadness, the awareness that this was ending, the ache of not being able to afford the other games that year. All of it was already sitting right at the surface. And Addi’s misstep became the thing that broke the seal.
That’s usually how it works, isn’t it? The moment we blow up is rarely just about the moment in front of us. It’s about everything we’ve been carrying that we haven’t dealt with yet.
Kari understood that. She let me feel it, she gave me time to start cooling down on my own, and then she stepped in — not to defend Addi, not to attack me, but to help me see clearly again. That’s wisdom. That’s grace. That’s what a good partner does. And I don’t take it for granted.
Here’s what I want to leave you with. There will be moments in your life that are emotionally loaded before they even begin. Days you’ve been looking forward to for months. Milestones. Lasts. Firsts. The kind of days where the feelings are already so close to the surface that the smallest thing can tip you over the edge.
On those days especially, slow down before you speak. The people around you are probably feeling the weight of the moment too. And whatever frustration you’re carrying, even if it’s completely valid, ask yourself whether unloading it right then and there is going to make the day better or worse. Ask yourself whether you’d rather be right or whether you’d rather be present.
Because I can tell you from experience: being right felt pretty hollow standing there in the middle of a warmup circle, missing my son’s last performance while I was too angry to watch it.
Fortunately for us, we got it together. We moved forward. We watched Colby march into that stadium, we cheered the Sooners to a win over LSU, and we made memories as a family that I will carry for the rest of my life. The day was redeemed. But it almost wasn’t.
Don’t let your emotions steal the moments you’ve been waiting for. Show a little grace. Choose presence over pride. And if you’ve got someone in your life like Kari, someone who will tell you the truth with love and without a hundred lashes, hold onto them tight.
I’m Darrell Darnell, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
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