Back to talking music

I'm finally ready to pick up where I left off on the song meme. It took me a while to come up with an answer to the following:

Day 06 - A song that reminds you of a certain event

I definitely had a few strong possibilities, but the only one that really allows me to tell an interesting personal story is this one:

www.youtube.com/watch

This song, and also this video bring me back to the first vacation that I had as an adult.

It was the summer of 1997, just a few months after I'd gotten together with Mike, and I was 18 going on 19. We were still getting used to being in a romantic relationship after having been just friends for over a year, and I was adjusting to having a boyfriend, period. I was thrilled beyond belief that someone finally took that sort of interest in me, and I was determined to make it work without sacrificing my female friendships. By that time I'd had more than one girlfriend ditch me for their respective dudes, and knowing how that felt, I didn't want to repeat the same pattern.

Out of all the girls who I hung out with at the time, my friend Sara was one of three girls whose continued friendship was most important to me. She and I had known each other since third grade, and she was the only elementary school friend whose company I still enjoyed. And since she was single and had cut ties with just about everyone else we knew, I tried to include her in my outings with Mike as much as I could. Not that we never had time alone, but since she and Mike got along so well I didn't see any harm in us forming a power trio. Usually that meant driving around aimlessly, watching MST3K marathons or Cartoon Network cartoons at Mike's house, or frequenting our favorite diners. And all of this kept us entertained just fine, except that as the summer progressed we all started feeling bored and restless.

We talked about how cool it would be to take a vacation somewhere. At first, we didn't have anywhere in particular in mind, so we looked at travel guides at Barnes and Noble and did some internet research. Eventually we concluded that our best bet was taking a road trip to somewhere within the Midwest. This was partially due to us wanting to keep the trip inexpensive, but also due to the fact that Sara's mom wouldn't give her permission to go unless we went somewhere relatively close. Millie was overprotective of Sara, with good reason. Sara had a myriad of health problems that included congenital heart defects, was taking all kinds of medications, and had known from the time she was born that she couldn't expect to live as long as the rest of us.

We all wanted to visit somewhere that none of us had ever been, and ultimately that meant us driving to Cincinnati, Ohio. The five-hour drive was long enough to feel like an adventure but short enough that Sara's mom was okay with it. Mike did all the driving and we checked into a Days Inn about half an hour away from the downtown area. We didn't explore the city proper all that much now that I think about it, because we were too busy exploring the farmland and doing a lot of the same stuff we did at home, just in a different setting so it seemed cooler. We hung out at a high-end mall. We discovered the joy that is a 24-hour Meijers. We ate at Perkins and Dennys and other diner-type places. We swam in our hotel pool. We watched MTV and HBO. We colored my and Mike's hair in the hotel bathroom (I chose a deep burgundy shade, he went blond). We went to see Men In Black on the day it opened. And in our one attempt to change things up, we spent a full day (maybe even two?) at an amusement park called Kings Island, where I recall riding some pretty awesome roller coasters, and trying a waterslide that dropped you straight down into a splash-down pool from a height of like 90 feet.

I don't recall a lot of other details about this trip, except for the ones that explain how the Missy Elliot song I linked to above figures in to all this. Every morning, we set a wake-up call for 9 or 10 a.m., late enough to sleep in, but early enough that we wouldn't waste the entire day in bed. The ringing phone jarred us awake, and then we'd put on the TV to keep us from drifting back to sleep. This was back when MTV still aired a morning block of videos, and since I didn't have cable at home, I'd eagerly flip to that channel, hoping to catch something new and cool. Or at least, that's what I did the first couple of days of our trip. It didn't take long to figure out that the video block followed the exact same rotation EVERY SINGLE DAY. And since we were getting up at relatively the same time, that meant the first video we'd always catch was Supa Dupa Fly.

This got to be annoying, because none of us were hip hop fans, and so we developed a deep, irrational hate for Missy and her song. As the trip progressed we made a bit of a joke out of our morning ritual. I'd grab the remote and ask Mike and Sara if they thought today just might be the day we'd wake up to something different. I'd flip to the channel, and we'd groan in unison at the sight of the inflating mylar suit that had become the bane of our existence.

There were other videos crammed down our throats throughout the course of that trip. Criminal by Fiona Apple. Sober by Tool. Dangerous by Busta Rhymes. But the repetition of those, even the latter, didn't bother us in the slightest.  In hindsight, I think it was a case of Missy being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We resented not being able to wake to music we actually liked, and someone had to bear the brunt of that frustration. Which, I might add, was expressed more in jest than anything else.

I don't hear that song very often anymore, but it will forever make me think of being in Ohio with Mike and Sara. Since then I've had trips that were much more eventful, but this one still holds up as one of my all-time favorites. I don't know if anything will ever compare to the sense of fun and absolute freedom I felt being someplace new with one of my best friends and the boy who was well on his way to becoming my first love. It was all I needed, all I wanted, and more than I could have ever asked for.