When Tac and I were just married we met Larry. I had recently watched the movie Clifford with Martin Short, which had a roller coaster named Scary Larry….catchy theme song….hence the nick name was born. Larry was into cool music, played the guitar, and in general was a lot like Mary Poppins; you know “practically perfect in every way.”
A while back I wrote a post on The Toadies and Larry commented on it. See here, if you like. That got the old memory revved up and I have been thinking about Larry and his beautiful wife and daughters (3) ever since. One night in particular Larry wrote me an ode, (mostly it was a plea to roll the windows up) and I thought I would sort of return the favor with a blog post explaining why they were down in the first place.
Tac, Larry, myself and a couple other guys drove from Boise to Portland to see Nine Inch Nails and David Bowie in concert. Our tickets were for chairs, we even got to sit in the front row, but that wasn’t good enough for the boys. They wanted to be on the floor in all the action. As we sat there, several guys tried to jump over the rail onto the floor that was like 10 feet below. Some of them made it, many of them got caught and kicked out of the concert. Mind you Tac and I had only been married for about a year, so when he started seriously suggesting that we jump over that rail I was very irritated. There were certain expectations I had of him as a “husband,” and that was not at all inline with those expectations. Sure Tac and his buddies would have made it, but I am not at all athletically inclined in the ways of fence hopping. I also couldn’t bear to admit that I was terrified of the jump and even more so of being locked outside of that theater for the next two hours in a dark rainy town that I had never been to before.
They didn’t jump, mostly I think because of my expressed wish for them not to (which made me feel like the fun ruining only girl there). I totally enjoyed the concert, but when it was over and we had to drive home my blood was reaching the boiling point. I was mad at Tac; I wasn’t some chick, I was his wife and I didn’t feel like he had treated me very nice that night (irrational or not isn’t the point right now).
When it was my turn to drive that night, and it was a cold night, I rolled my window down and let the freezing cold air blow on us for a long time. I thought it felt wonderful, I thought if I rolled the window up I would most likely suffocate. That’s when Larry wrote the Ode to Jen, something about rolling the window up while he was still able to feel his hands.
Anyways, they all survived the cold and I got over it, and Scary Larry has been a good friend ever since.
Popularity: 16% [?]
