"I don't want to fade away ..."

Whenever I hear Clapton, circa Derek and the Dominos or Cream, I think of Kathy S. She and I were besties in high school. We were inseparable, joined at the hip by teenage angst. She was the youngest of four, I the oldest of three. It was cool to stay at her house to experience a different family dynamic. Her two older brothers wore their hair long and both were intellects and naturalists and hippies. Rick and Joe shared a bedroom next to hers and from there we would borrow their albums and play them over and over and over. We would write down lyrics on the brown paper bag covers of our text books and in the margins of our spiral notebooks. We both worshipped Jackson Browne and wrote really awful poetry inspired by our unpopularity and unrequited love. Rick was studying to become a veterinarian and once Kathy stole pills from his room thinking they were Quaaludes. They were horse tranquilizers. She convulsed, was rushed to the ER, and got her stomach pumped. Her near-death experience yielded a three-month grounding, and only enhanced her poetry a tad. I still have notes we exchanged and poems we penned, stored in a box that I made in middle school Wood Shop. I lost touch with Kathy years ago, but am reminded of her in songs and whenever I see a reference to Yeats. He was one of our favorites. We were trying to be intellects, too. You try to be a lot of things in high school. I wonder if we ever stop trying.

I will share these with my 15 year old daughter. I know we will both pick them apart with abandon while enjoying belly laughs. I could stand a good belly laugh. Read at your own risk. Hope your urge to chuckle trumps your urge to vomit.