I remember....
This entry was posted on 9/1/2006 3:29 PM and is filed under General.
I just picked up my kids from high school and was driving them home when my iPod hit a series of songs that, along with the talk from the kids, sent me flying back 20+ years.
Queen's "We Will Rock You" played first. That song always takes me back to 10th grade, listening to it on somebody's cassette recorder in the back of the bus on the way home from Eisenhower High School. I, along with a number of other stoners, had made it clear that the back of the bus belonged to us. Never offensively and with no bullying, the other kids just knew that once you passed a certain row a...different...crowd occupied the seats.
I always, always, sat with a girl named Nancy. We were just friends, she had always made it crystal clear she was madly in love with some older guy, but it was still oh so cool to share the seat with such a pretty girl and to have the other guys think you had something going on.
Back to the song. We Will Rock You always reminds me of a certain day. The song was blasting as much as it could blast from a portable cassette deck, it was a hot Houston day and I was talking to a bleached blond, deeply tanned girl named Angie (I think her last name was Campbell). She was absolutely gorgeous and was reputed to be a girl of loose virtues. I was smitten each time I saw her. She was wearing a spaghetti strap top that would have been considered inappropriate for school if she hadn't worn a shirt over it but only until we hit the bus.
She was also wearing a pair of Tiddies. Some of you may remember these thick foam sandals held by surgical tubing between your toes and running around your feet. The ugliest shoes made, but you had a certain amount of cool if you could wear them.
She could.
I wonder what Angie is doing now. What does she look like? How has life treated her?
One of my two best friends, and the one I had been friends with the longest (since I was 14), died on the last day of May this year.
I got the call from his family that he was in ICU and might not make it, so I dropped everything and headed to Houston. I spent most of his last two days with him, and stood there and talked to him while he took his last breaths. I like to think that he heard me and knew he wasn't alone.
I miss him a lot.
We shouldn't grow old and friends shouldn't die.
More later...
