Underscoring the point.........

And so, the boy arrived home from Lollapalooza, thankfully chemicallyl unaltered when I went to pick him up at the train station, accompanied by the grandparents. Don't ask, don't tell, and all that rot, cause I don't want to know, but I will say that I told him if he gets an academic scholarship for next year, I will personally buy his ticket for the return trip next year.

He has announced that he will be taking his little brother, at some point in the future, so that he too can become a man. When I mentioned that it involves a) noise, b) crowds, and c) heat, the three things that I know Seth hates most, Thomas replied "oh yeah, he would hate it, but he's going. Not right now, but he'll go, and he'll love it." Once again one of those things only a brother can share with a brother, I think. And again, one of those "don't ask, don't tell things" that only a mother can give the proper evil eye for. Oye.

So now, a week or so later, I was at work, and my friend Ann mentioned that she got another "misdirected" email. Ann, who lives on what we jokingly call "Wisteria Lane" because of the desperate housewives there, just happens to have an email address that is one underscore away from someone who appears to be a woman who is, shall we say, rather popular with the boys. All on the Q-T, of course, but in this case, popularity equals some serious cash.

When Ann first told me about it, me being me, I had to go and google and see what I could find. What found was that a good time is apparently had by all, and the woman doesn't have to worry about paying her light bill. Oye. Ann gets emails from time to time, from customers who can't seem to figure out to add that little underscore, and want to make appointments to meet up for a little "company." Little do they realize that the emails are being received by the wife of a dentist who enjoys quilting, dolls, and raising her nuclear family, and whose idea of excitement is an upcoming Yarn Convention in Chicago. All in all, she's very wholesome, so you can imagine the giggles these emails evoke.

Imagine her surprise when she opened up her email yesterday, only to find an offer from "Roy," who would like to enjoy her namesake's company for a couple of hours. Roy, who just happens to live only blocks from Ann's house. Oye. And of course, me being me, I had to google to see if I could figure out where Roy lives, and who he is, because I'm nosy like that. I mean, how many Roys can live on Wisteria Lane, anyway?

Well, I haven't found him yet, but if you know a guy named Roy who lives in northern Indianapolis, give him a nudge, and tell him to throw some extra in the offering plate on Sunday, cause he obviously has some cash to blow. And while you're underscoring your point, make him buy you this uber cool vintage wiggle dress from jazzboogie, on etsy.

Lollapa-WHO-za Part 2

And so it was, last Saturday, at midnight, that our phone rang. We had just climbed into bed, so we weren't asleep yet. I heard Dan saying "why do you need to talk to her, why can't you talk to me," right before he handed me the phone.

Thomas was talking faster than I had ever heard, while he said "I need the number for Northwestern Hospital in Chicago, real quick." What the heck? I asked him what in the world was going on, and he tried the "oh, everything is fine, I just need the number" thing that thousands of crazy teenagers have tried and failed, in a desperate attempt to forestall the inevitable interrogation by the inquisitive parent. "Oh, don't worry," he said, "we just lost Andrew. There are a bunch of ambulances here, and we're thinking he might be on one of them."

Oh, that's all? Let me get that number for you.......

Turned out they had been at the Rage Against the Machne concert, during which dozens of people were carted off by the 35 ambulances standing by as shuttles to the hospital. Basically, Thomas said that if you were under 5'6", you got "destroyed" whn the crowd surged to the front when the concert started. A couple of vain attempts by the lead singer to get the crowd to calm down finally got things a bit more under control. ""Look out for one another," pleaded Rage singer Zack de la Rocha, eventually threatening to end the show early if people didn't calm down. Why? Only seconds into "Testify," the band had already created complete mayhem among the ocean of people at the AT&T stage, with myriad mosh pits turning Grant Park into a sea of sweat, fists and elbows," said the paper. Thomas said that if you fell in the mosh pit, you'd better hope that someone yanked you up, because otherwise, you were going to be body surfed to security and hauled off to the first responders. At one point he saw someone fall, then all he saw was an ankle sticking up in a sea o moshers, and "all I thought was, that guy must be dead."

Here's his email of the next day:
"2 hours of straight energy, moshing, and going nuts. We were pretty far up (and two of the guys we're with could have reached out and touched the lead singer -- they were FRONT ROW and got DESTROYED), and anyone below like...5'10" got messed up, and Andrew is like 5'5" 5'6" tops. If you fell, you were done. People around you would help you, but if the crowd closed in on you before people could help you up, there wasn't ANYTHING you could do.

But after the show was over, 4 of us met up at the spot we said we would go to, but we could not find Andrew ANYWHERE. He left his wallet & phone with one of the other guys, so there was really nothing he could do. We ran around looking for him until about 12:30, at which point we didn't really have a choice since the trains stopped running at 1am. But somehow, some friggin way, that kid made it 15 miles back to the hotel without any phone or money.

You have to understand how absolutely scary this was though. You would have to have been there to realize that the odds of him having been in the hospital were REALLY high. This cop we asked for some information said that there were 35 ambulances making runs back and forth between hospitals. When I said there were legions of them, I wasn't kidding. You also have to understand that Andrew is both retarded (he didn't think to call his phone even though he knew we had it), and if he got in to any kind of situation in the mosh, he would have just given up basically. Scariest shit ever, but now that he's back we can look back on it and say that it was the best thing all 5 of us have ever experienced, and we're doing it again at Nine Inch Nails tonight. :D"

Oh, to be young again............

All this happened whilst we were attending the opening night of the Wizard of Oz at church, with Jill playing

Glinda. So whilst legions were carried off to Northwestern, and Dorothy was being carried to Kansas, somewhere, someone was leading a normal life. That never happens here, of course, so let's just take a gander at a vintage 80s Rick Springfield Oz tour shirt, from Purse Diva Vintage, at Main Street Vintage Online. Just keep repeating, "there's no place like Lollapalooza, there's no place like Lollapalooza....."

Lollapa-WHO-za Part 1

Thomas just got back from Lollapalooza. Hearing that the kid was going to a three day music festival in Chicago is one of those "be still my beating heart" moments for a mother. In typical Utter Chaos fashion, things got complicated.

The night before he left, he mentions to me at work at 6 p.m. that he forgot to go to the bank. This is not a good thing, since he had lost his debit card somewhere in his room about a month ago, and it hasn't been found yet. Add to that that I had lost my debit card the day before, and of course the new one hadn't arrived yet. I ended up leaving work for ten minutes to run around the corner to the bank where I have my business account. Got him four crisp hundred dollar bills, which I promptly snatched away when he reached for them. "Don't," I said, "let this money be involved with anything illegal, any alcohol, or bail money, or you're paying me back double." He responded with a roll of the eyes.

Next morning, his father drove him to the train station, for a 6:30 a.m. departure. Right as he got there, Thomas remembered that he had forgotten his $200 Lollapalooza ticket on his "desk" (aka card table) at home. Did I mention that it was now 6:14 a.m.? Dan drove like his pants were on fire back to the house, grabbed the ticket (yes, there was swearing about the "dumb kid" involved), and got back to the Amtrak station at 6:32, where te kid met him at the door, saying that the train had been delayed for 30 minutes. It was at this point that Thomas should've realized that God does, indeed, exist.

More tomorrow. Meantime, enjoy this fast moving train shirt, featuring Restless Heart -- a band whose music was featured in our wedding -- from Earth-Aware, on ebay. The only thing it's missing is the kid running alongside, holding a concert ticket.