Fourth of July Memories with Erin Plays

 https://twitter.com/ErinPlays_Games/status/1543834984062095362

Since Buffy is trending & it’s the 4th, it seems like a good time to share my most depressing 4th of July! It was 2001? My friend was sleeping over & fell asleep very early. There was a Buffy rerun on but it was “The Body.” I watched that in the dark while fireworks went off

What kind of story is this?  It fucking sucks cock.  It goes nowhere.  How is that even depressing?  It’s just boring.  

A horntard replies, “For 4TH of July, I’m still gonna be wondering (emoji) what’s wrong (emoji) with the United States (emoji) (with these school (emoji) shootings) and nothing is being done about it.”

Maybe you could have stuck a few more emojis in there.  What a simpleton.  THIS is what he complains about.  

Of all the problems with the US, people tend to focus on a very narrow band of relatively minor issues.  School shootings, abortion, masks.  It’s by design that these are the issues that people focus on.  Actual problems like the cost of health care, the cost of college, and massive inequality aren’t issues that people focus on.  These are problems that affect just about everybody, whereas school shootings, abortions, and masks affect very few people.

But these are the topics that the media hype.  So these are the topics that get the unwashed masses riled up on Twitter and whatnot.  

So we’re talking about Independence Day.  I’d go to the local parade as a kid.  When I was maybe 10 to 13 years old, I was in the school band so I’d be in the parade.  I’m not sure if I had fun or not.  There was a lot of practice.  We had to march through the streets as part of this practice.  It was tiring.  

Looking back, it seems like this should have been embarrassing stuff but I don’t know.  I was fine with it.  I didn’t dread going or anything like that.  

Then during the actual parade, I remember a couple of drunks offering a sip of beer to one of my bandmates if he would crash the cymbals.  The kid just looked at these drunks with a mixture of confusion and disdain.  

I remember the last parade I did.  This was after we had graduated from the 8th grade.  So school was over.  Everybody was done for the summer and they were never going back to that school.  But the 8th graders would still participate in this parade.  Seems kind of weird but that’s what was done.

The girl who won the “Hottest Girl in the Class” contest was watching the parade.  I talk about her here:

https://gamergrrlsofficial.blogspot.com/2022/02/newts-got-issues-newt-wallen.html

She wasn’t in the band, she was just along the parade route.  And she was cheering really loudly and showing psychotic levels of school spirit.  

She was the same in the weeks leading up to graduation.  She would regularly start crying and that would cause other people to start crying.  The whole fucking class was crying at some point, except me.  I remember a guy saying to me, “Everyone’s crying except you and me.”  And then a little while later, he started crying.

I didn’t give a shit.  I was always looking at the next thing.  So I was interested in going to high school, in this case.  I didn’t get attached to what I was doing now.  What’s the solution here anyway?  Are we going to stay in the 8th grade the rest of our lives?  

I had this same mentality throughout life.  I changed schools a few times.  I changed jobs a lot.  I changed girlfriends a lot.  I moved a lot.  I didn’t give a fuck.  If I was one of these sentimental types who needed familiar surroundings and the support of friends and family, I wouldn’t be able to do any of that.  

On the one hand, I wish that I would have better appreciated what I was doing in the moment as opposed to always dreaming about what I could be doing in the future.  I could have made more friends, done more stuff, shit like this.  But on the other hand, fuck it.  

I knew a woman who said that she could never leave London because she made so many friends there.  But she had already moved once.  She moved from Northern Ireland.  Didn’t she have friends in Northern Ireland who she left?  

Things are in a constant state of flux.  Even if you stay in your rut all of your life, other people come and go as they go about living their lives.  You just have to roll with it.  And here’s something that I’ve discovered: you meet new people.  Wherever you go, there are people.  Maybe better people.  

But that girl peaked in the 8th grade so she was really depressed about having to go to high school and get a job and all of the challenges that come with life.  

As a teenager, I was at this parade with a friend, causing some mild mischief.  And his mother was there with some guy who seemed to be around our age.  It was weird.  Who is this guy with my friend’s mother?  I still have no idea who that guy was but that woman got divorced not too long after this.

By the time I was an adult, I wasn’t doing anything for Fourth of July.  What do people even do?  I don’t know.  

People have barbeques with their family but I’ve never barbequed in my life.  Of course, there’s nobody to barbeque for.  

And anyway, I moved to the UK when I was in my mid-20s.  It’s not an event here.

So those are my Fourth of July stories.  Not as interesting as watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer at a sleepover, perhaps.  

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *