A Short Tale of Bromance…

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“Dude…I AM your Bro!”

Many Moons ago (I like pretending I’m a Native American Chief) a group of my buddies and I decided to go to a concert. Pearl Jam was playing at the University of Kansas.  They were one of our favorite groups, and KU is known to have quite a few fetching lasses.  Oh, the name of the show was something like “Free Concert on the Hill.”  Pearl Jam, pretty girls, AND free. We really didn’t have a choice, we had to go.  We loaded up in one of my friend’s van, which we affectionately called “The Black Box” because once we were encased within it’s thin body we were invincible.  We headed down the road…doh-ti-doh-ti-doooh. On the way there talked about pressing political issues, the meaning of life, and important topics of the such.  Or, maybe the really good baseball play we saw on Sports Center the previous night.  I can’t remember.

We arrived at KU and piled out like we were storming Normandy, except we didn’t have any weapons and we were laughing.  The good vibe at the event was palpable.  It was a beautiful day and everyone was having fun.  We broke out the frisbee.  We threw it around often back in the day and were all pretty good at accuracy.  However, for some strange reason the frisbee kept landing on or very close to blankets where cute girls were congregated.  Curious.  After a few hours of bad aim, the show started.

A couple buddies of mine, I’ll call them “Dan” and “Craig” because that’s their names, migrated towards the stage.  Go back a read that part again and use air quotes.  It makes them sound more mysterious, and they would like that.  I digress. Eddie Vedder started wailing out “Even Flow” and a mosh pit began to take form.  Like I said earlier, there was good Karma that day so it wasn’t one that thrashed.  Picture a slow moving whirlpool of young hippies about one-hundred feet in diameter.  It was moving counter-clockwise because I live in the Northern Hemisphere.  That’s my theory, don’t judge me.  My friend Dan decided to dive in while Craig and I remained on the perimeter.  Dan has very blonde hair, almost white at the time because he was a swimmer. Picture Billy Idol without the sneer.  He was the North Star in our group as we could always find our bearings by spotting him.  There could be 100,000 people, and someone would say, “Where’s Dan?” Two seconds later, “There he is.”  Sorry, I’m wandering, back on track.  Dan was in the swirling vortex and we were watching him bob up and down.  The band was really stretching out the song so he’d been in for about 10 minutes when he decided to exit.

Craig and I saw him rounding the corner and decided he should stay in a bit longer.  We blocked his exit.  We were laughing so hard, including Dan as he was carried away by the rip hip tide.  Second time around, he tried to get out again. Nope.  We wouldn’t allow it. Again, we were just dying laughing.  It was a huge circle, so it would take a couple minutes to rotate.  Third time around.  Dan had his arms held out like a child needing to be picked up.  Denied.  As Dan was being swept away, he was laughing and screaming, “Nooooooooooooo!” as if he had fallen off a ship that was sailing away from him.  The fourth time around we took pity.  We regret it to this day.

Our day on the Hill.

Even Flow by Pearl Jam