Sunday, June 26, 2011

Rock Star Moment

For many years, I made my living as a musician. Not in some hipper than thou angsty rock band, but in an odd, very specific subgenre of music (think Lithuianian polka band.Not really, but Lithuianian polka band is funnier). Usually we would go from town to town, festival to festival and while those peeps who actually followed that type of music would know who we are, we could stop at a local Denny's, order a Grand Slam and clean out the toys in the claw machine without ever being "recognized". Every once in a great while, someone in say- Hayti, Mo. would be a displaced follower of Lithuianian polka music and would recognize us and we would get approx. 5 minutes of "fan time". We called these moments, Rock Star Moments. I had my first blog Rock Star Moment.

Yesterday morning I was sitting in Starbucks enjoying their free and very fast WIFI. While I was pulling up the blog to do a bit of admin stuff, a gentleman behind me piped up. "You read Ceol Mor too?" He pronounced it as Seal Mor so I knew he wasn't a displaced Scot. "Actually, I write it" I replied. I'm kind of surprised that anyone other than my Mom reads this but Jim is retired so I suppose he has some free time to read and I did once mention Kemah in a post, which is how he found us.

As it turns out, the gentleman's name was Jim. He reads lots of blogs about cruising, boats getting ready to cruise and most especially boats getting ready to cruise with little kids. See, Jim and his late wife cruised with their children through out the Carribean, South America, the US and Europe in the late 1970's.

Jim said that reading about our getting the boat ready while trying to ensure these kids have a childhood and while having our original time frame slip away from weeks to years was so familiar to him. He hand his wife had purchased a 32 foot boat in order to go cruising with their 2 boys, aged 3 and 5. As it turned out, they did go cruising on a 32 foot boat but with their 3 boys- aged 18 months, 7 and 9. Sound familiar? Jim had what might be my favorite quote of the year about cruising. "Cruising is the most fun you will ever have with your family while being absolutely miserable". I admit that hearing him describe cruising for a few years on a 32 foot boat with 3 young boys made me feel like a real whiner about our boat. Never have I been more grateful for 10 feet!

So thanks for the words of enocouragement Jim. Thanks for letting me know that al 3 of your boys have grown into responsible adults despite being vagabonds for a few years and missing out on the public school experience. Thanks for reassuring me that all of this frustration and hard work will indeed be worth it. I look forward to being absolutely miserable all over the world.

6 comments:

  1. I love it! And yes you are a rock star my dear! Hi Jim! Thanks for sharing that Cid, it's always cool to hear from those who have been there and done that. I always blame Tom & Mel Neale for our lifestyle. I interviewed them with their kids while anchored here in Annapolis when I was fresh out of college (for a tv show I was working for at the time) and I punched out of work that day knowing that I needed to do the very same thing.

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  2. Now wait a second, let's hear more about this band!!!

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  3. I want to hear more about the band too- I second Charlotte here. :) How awesome to have a rock star moment and how amazing to hear about his experiences! :)

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  4. Very neat! It was a good band too! I LOVE Lithuanian Polka. Apparently. :-) :-) :-)

    And how DO you pronounce Ceol Mor? I was listening on the video but I got distracted by wondering how the sound and figurines got into the video in the first place and whether or not those mannequin looking people knew how to pronounce it right or not.

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  5. Jill, it is pronounced KALE MORE. Like the lettuce type thing. In both Scots and Irish GAelic, C followed by a vowel is pronounced as a hard C. Geeky linguistics lesson done.

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  6. I LOVE linguistics, even geeky linguistics. They're probably all geeky, I guess.

    I almost got a master's in multiculturalism JUST because it required a linguistics class. But then I thought...probably I should base my decision on all the classes as a whole and not just that one class.

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