Five Perfect Moments

I'm doing this exercise in therapy where I make a timeline of all of the individual moments in my life that I remember as being perfect. Seriously? I have A LOT. A lot more than a girl deserves. Some of them, we'll cover periodically here as they come to me.

Remember the Spin Doctors?
One summer, Pookie and I went to see the Spin Doctors. Part of me thinks that we may have had J-Flo with us, but I'm not sure. And I'm not even sure why we went to see the Spin Doctors, because they had all of two songs. Hell, I think that they still have all of two songs. But it was summer in Western Pennsylvania, and we all know that summer nights in any part of the midwest are more beautiful than summer nights anywhere else and there's possibly nothing better than dancing to live music on grass with stars above you in the then-Starlake-now-CocaCola amphitheater during those nights. Anyway, I'm pretty sure we went to the Spin Doctors' show with very little expectation. And it ended up being this perfect night. You know how sometimes you're at a show, and the band actually just connects with the audience, and everybody is feeling it? And you dance with strangers and sing at the top of your lungs and then people fall asleep in the car on the way home with the windows down? It was that kind of night. And months later, Pookie was watching MTV in Pittsburgh and I was watching MTV in Indiana and we both saw the same news report with the Spin Doctors. And the Spin Doctors said that their favorite show on the tour was in Pittsburgh. And Pookie and I were both like, "Yeah."

Speaking of Driving in the Midwest
Which is one of my favorite things to do, driving in the Midwest. These long roads lay out in front of you and you can just move, cover ground. This one time, Catwoman and DivaMae and I were taking a road trip where Catwoman and I were going to drop DivaMae in Indiana to visit his brother and then the two of us were headed to Louisville. It was summer. And we decided to drive all night. As the sun was coming up the next morning, Catwoman and DivaMae were both dead asleep in the car. And I was having a "moment." It was summer. We had driven all night talking about relationships and dreams. Two of my best friends were asleep in the car and the sun was orange and coming up over the cornfields and all was right with God. And just as I'm having this moment, DivaMae wakes up, reaches over to the cd player and turns FREAKIN' LORDS OF ACID ON AT FULL VOLUME, waking up Catwoman and destroying all the peacefulness in the sunrise. And yet, somehow that moment was perfect.

Speaking of DivaMae
One night, DivaMae and I decided that every time we heard the song "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails, we were going to strip our clothes off. And so we did.

Speaking of Being Naked
Wait. I don't even have one for this, and it was the only logical place that I could take that last one. Let's restart.

This one time, at band camp...
Band camp being one of my favorite times of the year every year in high school. And I was a freshman and TimR was a senior and a REBEL and he drove this blue drug van and everybody who was cool would have lunch in the drug van and sneak liquor after band camp moved to the football field during the second week. And I got invited to hang out with the cool kids in the van and then the next day TimR drove me home on his motorcycle and my mom FLIPPED OUT. That was a good summer.

Speaking of TimR....
There was a marina that his mother owned in Five Town that was named after him, and one day J-Flo and ChuckA and some of our other friends took J-Flo's boat out onto the Mon with more liquor than any group of 18-year-olds should ever have. And there was Zima. And ChuckA and I both drank so much Zima that by the time we docked at TimR's marina we were sick and embarrassing to be around AND we never drank Zima again in our lives. But I remember that that was one of the last days that we were able to all spend together as a group before people all started leaving, and it was sunny and fun and I still remember it.

See how I cycled from J-Flo back to J-Flo? We'll jump to another time era later.