That last attempt I wrote was rough. Rough enough that I’d normally go back and redo it. Normally. I didn’t go back. This isn’t the next Great American Novel. You get what you get some days. May 19th was one of those days. Today is May 25th, you’ll get whatever this becomes as well.

I spent a couple of days on the Mississippi Gulf Coast visiting my mom and as it usually goes, I reminisced and tried to recall the past. To think of the names and the nights spent on a strip of sand when I was my son’s age. Somehow 15 was different back then.

As a parent, I looked towards these years in my kids lives with trepidation. Would they attempt the jackassery of my youth? I guess phones are good for something as idle minds left 80’s kids driving around half drunk with the Beastie Boys turned to 11 on their car stereos, an endless circle trying to find out what people were “doing” that night. Inevitably we parked out at Kelly Avenue on the beach or out past the Shit Flame at Gulfport Lake, so named because you drove past the sewage plant on the way to a dirt patch that’s now a pretty nice boat launch.

Update, no one was ever doing anything but trying to get someone to buy them beer.

I know some of today’s kids party, but the 80’s were a level of irresponsibility that we only saw outdone by the 90’s. I mean we barely feared the police, who seemed to leave us alone if we did the same. I can barely remember anyone getting arrested for anything other than stealing pallets from behind a grocery store for our weekly unpermitted bonfires. Cameron would always procure them, soak them with 1-5 gallons of gas and set them ablaze in a near explosion, adding a pressure treated wood smoke stack to the 85 deg heat and immeasurable humidity. It was glorious.

When I’m on the Coast these days, I try and remember names and wonder how those people turned out. I am naive enough to treat everyone like it’s 1989 and we are meeting up after the last bonfire. As much as people change, I think we remain the same and so I want to feel that when I see them.

I ran 6 miles around Gulfport, past the inlet on HWY 90 where we would park and I tried to name them all. Cameron, Skatin Bob, Brian, Forest, Brad, Alan, Kyle(s), Lissa, Lucy, Elizabeth, Dana, Faith, Chantelle, and on and on and on. I know where some of them are, other’s I have no clue. I like to think that if we ran into each other, we’d hug or high five and catch up like it was still the Monday after a Sunday night Memorial Day weekend bonfire.

I’d like to think that a lot, but who really knows. As much as I think people are exactly the same after 30 years, it’s a statistical impossibility that they are. They’ve lived, gained, and lost. Some are no longer alive.

I still like to think of them, and to see them, and to wonder how they turned out. What’s happened the last 30 years?

I think “not much” and I think probably “a lot”.

#hugsandhi5s