Good Times & Pretty Women We Made Our Wives

      I had a dream my best friend was rollerblading in Home Depot. But it wasn't too weird because his dad worked at Lowe's. So I joined him; only with roller skates. I was really good at it. Then we joined in the skate party in the parking lot.
      I woke up missing my best friend.
      We met in diapers. Though I don't really remember that part. My first memory is after we graduated from babyhood; showing each other our superhero underwear in the nursery at church.  
      I remember the time we snuck out of my room in the middle of the night and wound up being chased by angry gun owners and a police helicopter (though most of our fear was dedicated to how my dad was going to react to us sneaking out). I still remember the many conversations about girls, God and life we had sitting on his roof. The times we pursued the Lord with all we had. The days we would watch Lost, the Office and Seinfeld for hours at a time. The time when he rushed me to the hospital when my whole body starting shutting down or when I picked him up from the ER after sticking his fingers in a hedge trimmer.

      I remember the one night sitting in Subway on Lake Boulevard, I told him, "I think Jenna is the girl I want to marry."
      "So this is it, huh?" he asked looking up from his sandwich.
      "This is it, man."
      And I remember the phone call from Phoenix when he said of Wendy, "I want to marry this girl so bad."
      Now we are officially grown ups with wives that we are crazy about and jobs that pay the bills. We live a thousand miles away from each other and we have lives that require the majority of our time. But in the middle of it all, we get to have skate parties at Home Depot. Good times.
     Miss ya, Mike.     
     

    

Playlist Reminiscing

In 8^th grade, I found out “being in a band” was cool. This was evidenced by Blink-182 and three guys in my youth group who were known as Final Plea. Now, Blink was out of reach when it came to modeling myself and my maybe-someday band after. One, because they were adults and two, because they cussed and talked about sex and I knew you couldn’t do that as Christian band. Oh ya, I had to be in a Christian band because as a Christian, anything public you did had to be labeled as such or you were ashamed of Jesus. Disregard the minor detail that at the time I cussed and talked about sex incessantly. But Final Plea fame was attainable and exactly what I wanted. They occasionally sang about relatively moral subjects (Christian-band approved), they were just a few years older and all the girls my age were screaming the lyrics at every show we went to. Unfortunately for Final Plea, their fan base stayed the same age no matter how long they were around. I later found out this was typical of the pop punk genre.

So my best friend Mike, myself and one other guy started our own band. When you’re in 8^th grade, it’s super easy. All you have to do is get three friends together, pick a band name and then decide who has to learn which instrument. All three of us wanted to learn guitar because drums are complicated and no one ever knows the name of the bassist. We called ourselves Crimped03 which was loosely based off an instant-messanger screen name, which was loosely based off the middle-school dance favorite “crimp walking” (see video) and the fact that there were three of us.

One weekend, Mike came over to spend the night at my house. After watching the TGIF line up of Boy Meets World and Sabrina, we stayed up late trying to write a song that would launch Crimped03 into the spotlight.

The Nitty-Gritty of Bandom fact #1: bands need songs need lyrics.

“Ok, so what do we write a song about?”

“I don’t know. Maybe about something in the Bible?”

“Good idea.” (Christian-band approved)

            We dropped the Bible I owned but never read so that it would open randomly and blindly put our finger to the page.

 “ ‘And David mustered his men’. Well that sucks. Lets try again.”

Finally we came upon what looked like a usable Scripture. James’ “taming the tongue”.

            “Oh I got it! How about, ‘God gave it a use, don’t let it abuse.’”

           

“Dude that’s friggin gold!”

By the time we were done, we had our first rap song.

The Nitty-Gritty of Bandom fact #2: lyrics need melodies or its called rap.

Fact #3: Go punk or go home (circa ’99-‘04).

Well, the tongue song never made it on our album. Half because we still had no melody, half because we both woke up the next morning realizing it was crap and 99% because we never came close to making an album. Our third guitarist stopped going to our church and the band name left with him. We toyed with Crimped02 but it didn’t have the same ring to it. It was a VH1 Behind the Music special in the making.

All in all, we moved on from that scene.

So fast forward about nine years and here I am listening to Blink-182 and Final Plea on an ancient-of-days playlist, pondering the musings of an 8^th grade punk rock star. On stage with two of his best friends, playing a whole song with only three power-chords and an auditorium filled with screaming 8^th grade girls.

I’m glad we don’t always get what we want. An auditorium filled with screaming 8^th grade girls sounds terrifying.