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serendipitous reflections

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Talk Dirty to Me

Speaking of Bret Michaels...For my 14th birthday, my mother gave me three tickets to the Ratt/ Poison concert. I invited my friends Tiff and Nikki. We thought we were so cool because this was one of the first concert we got to go to without a parent. I will never forget that night. Picture it: a hot June night, Roanoke (VA) Civic Center, three teenage girls being dropped at the front door with money in hand for t-shirts and such, the smell of Aussie Instant Freeze Hair Spray coming from our big ass hair (Nikki had like 3" bangs), torn jeans, and in all 20,000 girls' minds just the thought of seeing Bret Michaels up close....my god!

Well we got to our seats which we were pretty good, and close to some boys that we knew from school. We decided we would go between the floor, our seats and their seats. As the concert progressed, we were having a great time singing at the top of our lungs and dancing. I went up to sit with our friend Chris, who had always been a "wild child." Chris' brother, who was 3 years older than us, had always taken Chris with him to parties and such. So Chris was well seasoned at 14. Anyway, I went up sit with "the boys" and Chris offered me a cigarette. I said "Oh, no I can't. Tiff and Nikki would be so be so disappointed. They'll tell their moms." That was my excuse because I was afraid to smoke in front of these boys because they all knew how to smoke, and were really experienced. I had only stolen a few cigarettes from my mom and tried smoking them with bad Nikki (not good Nikki that was with me at the concert). And honestly, Nikki smoked most of them. I just got used to the taste. This may explain why she smoked for years, and may still smoke for all I know, and I don't. But I ended up giving into peer pressure, and smoking. Chris assured me that they couldn't see what I was doing. By the way, Chris was really good that this. It turned out that they were clove cigarettes. They taste like you are smoking potpourri. So it wasn't really that bad. And by the end Tiff and Nikki ended up smoking one also.

Next to being so cool that you actually got to go the concert, was to wear your concert t-shirt the next day to school. I still remember what mine looked like...white t-shirt with Poison written in lime green and a picture of the band on the front with all these bright accent colors like hot pink and more lime green. It was hot, trust me. (snicker, snicker)

That was probably one of the best concerts I ever went to not because of the music or the smoking, but because we had such a great time...we were so cool and independent. (Cool is a relative term.)

On a side note, the funny thing about the clove cigarettes was that you could buy them at the mall near the Civic Center. There was tobacco shop and you could just go in and buy them. So the parents would take us to the mall before the concerts and we would go buy the cigarettes. It is actually pretty funny to think about it now.

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