When the Foeman Bares His Steel

When my father was the choral director at Booneville High School, his group performed several Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, including The Pirates of Penzance. One of the numbers in that work features the police force, in which they do a lot of marching. We boys thought that was great fun and spent lots of time imitating it. (Here is a LINK that shows one performance on this number.) Later, when Daddy was the director at Westark Community College, they did "Pirates" again, this time with a more mature cast. In their version, the policemen stood across the front of the stage as they marched together. One rather goofy-looking policeman was on the end, and he (deliberately) never was able to get in step with the others, but was constantly looking around at them trying to get coordinated. The fellow who marched next to him said he had a very hard time keeping his own step in time and trying to keep a straight face during that number.