(aren't we hot?)
ah red rocks, you're the home to many a great memories - the most recent being mr. peter gabriel. "peter gabriel?" you say. "isn't he someone your parents listened to when you were just a wee tot?" yup he sure is - and that's why my dad was sad we didn't invite him to the concert.
i actually remember one day after school in probably the 2nd or 3rd grade and my best friend (until she left the friendship bracelet i made her at the park months later ON PURPOSE) was sad for some reason and i went over to her house and sang her "don't give up, you still have friends" that's how much of an influence the ol' cassette player pounding through our house was on me, mom and dad. be proud (p.s. how great is this music video??)
anyway, yes we went to the peter gabriel concert at red rocks. and yes, it was raining like we were standing in our shower. with clothes on. and no rain jacket (in my case). so, i decided to throw on the old ratty bath robe that just so happened to be in our car, because doesn't everyone keep bath robes in their cars in case of emergency?
the second best part of the concert was when the rain clouds broke and opened up to reveal a perfectly amazing full moon right over us. while that was cool in and of itself, the very best part of the concert was the guy sitting in front of us watching when the moon came out and crying, literally crying through great big (likely drugged-up) sobs, "are you kidding me?!?" while hugging (clobbering) his concert-mates and whoever else was in a five mile radius of him. it just further confirms my theory that any event is only as good as the people watching.
the boy immediately called his friend - a true peter gabriel fan - after the concert and told him to run, don't walk, to the next show wherever it might be. little did we know it would be in toronto, canada a few days later...and that said friend would call back five minutes later with four tickets asking us to go with them.
so, we did what any reasonable and sensible people would do and canceled everything we had going on to leave our daughter with our nanny and fly to canada.
i was excited because i had never been to canada, although i for some reason told every person i met the first year in college that i was born there. i'm not quite sure why, but it was fun and only backfired once. you do stuff like that in college. or at least i did...
embarrassingly, the only thing i really knew about canada came from 11th grade geography when we were assigned to write a "travel journal" after "traveling to" (aka, researching) a foreign country. there's no way i should have even passed because i'm pretty sure canada cannot under any circumstance be considered "foreign," but that's beside the point.
the point is, i still shouldn't have passed because the only "research" i did was listening to this song over and over again. i'm once again pointing my fingers at you, mom and dad - thanks for teaching me early that song lyrics are an appropriate way to communicate in the world.
i'm not kidding. my travel journey consisted of me talking about how i drank milk from a bag and watched lemmings falling into the ocean. i got an A
peter gabriel was almost as good in canada, except there were no crazy sobbing men peeing their pants about the full moon. but, our flight attendant's name was cake, so that has to count for something.
