My Normal Life

I was a pretty boring guy all the way through college. I had a soap opera quality social life, but I never got arrested, crashed the ‘Girls Gone Wild’ filming or even had a car to smash into anything. I don’t like loud parties much, being drunk actually kinda freaks me out and the only time I was sitting in a circle having the Magic Dragon passed ‘round I turned it down more out of plausible deniability than moral fortitude. My wife has told me on several occasions that she always wanted to marry a nerd, so I guess that makes me one lucky guy, right? One September night my senior year of college, however, I drove to Austin, Texas with two friends in a bright red Jeep to sound my proverbial ‘YAWP.’ I had just finished a long hard summer of classes and putting my heart back together from a messy relationship the year before. It was a sticky summer of close friendship, head shaving, toe painting and soul searching that left me with a lot of emotional steam to release and I found my catharsis when I heard Chris Carrabba pipe,

‘And the picture frames are facing down
and the ringing from this empty sound
is deafening and keeping you from sleep.
And breathing is a foreign task
and thinking's just too much to ask
and you're measuring your minutes by a clock that's blinking eights.’

And so it was that I made the pilgrimage to see this sage for myself; to sit at his feet and behold in person the angst which flowed so palpably through his plaintive voice. To for one night lap up what MTV had been pitching. When Lee, Karen and I made it to 6^th Street in Austin, found some parking and made our way to Stubb’s BBQ, I had officially left College Station and found myself instead on the set of Wild On. The kaleidoscope of humanity, bouquet of olfactory sensations and cacophony of traffic mixed with shouts of revelry mixed with the deep resonance of driving bass grabbed me like a shore-breaking wave and easily subsumed my person into its energy.

Just outside the gate to the venue, I happened to run into my roommate from the year before, his eyes already glazed and lolling. Needless to say he was thrilled to see me. From there we barely dodged some projectile vomit from a young looking blonde and then somehow managed to keep her from plummeting to the ground after it until an EMT could be found to attend to her. From the midst of the throng of several hundred revelers, we let the music wash over us and felt our sweat mingle with that of our impossibly close neighbors and the water from the hose they intermittently sprayed the crowd with. After several hours of roiling participation in the rite, we made our way back the Jeep cotton-eared and reeking of God only knows what. I had never experienced anything quite like it before and never have since.

My cousin had jello shots at her wedding reception last night, and it kinda brought it all back for me.