I'm not naming names on this one.So. I volunteer to help at the high school fund raiser at a local bookstore. The kids perform music by the coffee shop while we parents of young musicians stand several feet from the front door with plates of cookies and a carafe of coffee hoping to lure shoppers close enough to tell them to please mention the school at the counter when they check out so the high school music program can grab a cut of the purchase they were gonna make anyways. It's a pretty ok fund raiser, as far as those things go. It beats bingo and chocolate bars anyday. Nonetheless, with my rapidly growing anxiety condition, I am really dreading the whole thing.
Past a couple saxophone players outside the door, belting out some jazzy holiday tunes, I walk into the book store and stop in my tracks as I catch an unexpectedly familiar tune. So unexpected, it takes me a minute to place what I am hearing. Some kid is strumming away on the guitar belting out a respectable rendition of Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" and segues right into an Elliott Smith cover. I'm stunned. What sort of 2009 teenager is into such stuff? I walk over and take a look at some boy in a hoodie and jeans playing away. I am heartened and hopeful. I pass out little flyers to potential book buyers with an all right feeling. Even the other mothers talking about ski vacations can't bring me down.
There's always more of "us" out there. Young and aging outsiders like me. And you.
