A blogger I follow often posts on stories she has written in response to Mama Kat. Mama Kat runs an online writer's workshop for bloggers. I was intrigued and signed up for her email blasts...here is my first try.
We have been living in post-20 year reunion la-la land around here. Last Saturday, my husband and I took a kid-free trip to sunny California and met up with friends, acquaintances and former nemeses for a night of reminiscing, drinking and just plain stupidity. One topic that arose was my high school era connections with the marching band. As my husband likes to put it, and he certainly ‘put it’ a lot last weekend, I was a band geek. Well, actually, I was a flag girl, one step sideways (???, not really up or down) from being a band geek. We called ourselves the Colorguard, because that just sounded better, but really we were the chess club of the performance teams at our school. I was apparently the coolest girl on the Colorguard, or so one particularly well-regarded young man told me at a Fall dance on the Quad back in 1989, as we spun around slowly to some long forgotten Madonna song. Alas, that burgeoning romance wasn’t meant to be; someone spit their gum up into the air during the slow dance and it landed in my hair just as the song ended. I ran quickly to the girl’s bathroom, mortified to look that young man in the eye again, my brush with coolness over.
Cool I may not have been, but beautiful, I could pull off sometimes. Or, at least Joe Dimaggio thought so. It was October 17th, 1989, and I stood in tunnel under Candlestick Park, along with about 15 other girls dressed in green polyester bodysuits embellished with gold sequins. We were holding an enormous American flag which we were charged with marching out onto the field and displaying for the National Anthem. It was game 3 of the World Series and Mr. Dimaggio was being transported into the stadium in a golf cart when he commented on our garb. “What a nice man,” I thought, as he drove by. Only later did I find out who he was. Of course, with the confusion that ensued moments later, none of us really knew what was going on with anything. At 5:04 PM, the Loma Prieta earthquake began. That earthquake resulted in the deaths of over 60 people, countless injuries, the collapse of two significant roadways in the San Francisco Bay Area and the destruction of numerous homes and buildings. The earthquake reportedly lasted about 10-15 seconds, but I remember it seeming like an eternity.
Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I had been through countless earthquakes before. But this was the first one that I spent on the underside of a large and somewhat antiquated (at least it is considered as such these days) sports stadium. Candlestick had light poles interspersed around the edge of the stadium, extending probably 30 feet into the air from the top of the structure, with enormous lights stretched out across 3 pole clusters. I remember these poles being painted orange; of course, my memory could be wrong. What I will never forget is the sight of these poles swaying along with the shaking of the earth, thinking how strange it was for them to be moving in such a way. As often happens when surprised by something, my brain didn’t fully register that we had experienced an earthquake until it was ending. By then, I was headed out from under the stadium and into the surrounding parking lots, where myself and my fellow Colorguard officers gathered up our team and watched, waited and fretted in true teenage girl fashion.
For the next hour, we stood in Candlestick’s parking lot and looked out over the partial view of the city, commenting on plumes of smoke rising into the air, wondering just how bad the earthquake was. We hadn’t gotten the full picture of the disaster by that point, and didn’t fully comprehend what we had experienced until we got home to our South Bay area high school some 8 hours later. Panic apparently caused the roadways to fill up quickly and our normally 1 to 2 hour ride home quickly turned into an all night experience. There was a large orange harvest moon that night, something I hadn’t ever seen before, and I remember wondering silently to myself if the world was somehow ending while we sat on that bus.
End it did not, for that I am thankful. However, continued taunts about being a band geek from my husband may result in his lifespan being shortened, or at least being made somewhat more miserable of an experience. It is probably just sour grapes on his part, he was a Varsity Basketball player in high school, they never got performances by the full band, drill team and Colorguard at their halftime shows. And, the cool guy of the fateful Madonna dance, yes, he was at my reunion and we said our hellos. Twenty years later, I am much cooler and still beautiful (or so my husband says), and I haven’t had gum in my hair since that dance. He had to have been impressed.
Post script: I wrote the above about being much cooler 20 years later, completely forgetting about the picture I posted yesterday. Nevermind.
We have been living in post-20 year reunion la-la land around here. Last Saturday, my husband and I took a kid-free trip to sunny California and met up with friends, acquaintances and former nemeses for a night of reminiscing, drinking and just plain stupidity. One topic that arose was my high school era connections with the marching band. As my husband likes to put it, and he certainly ‘put it’ a lot last weekend, I was a band geek. Well, actually, I was a flag girl, one step sideways (???, not really up or down) from being a band geek. We called ourselves the Colorguard, because that just sounded better, but really we were the chess club of the performance teams at our school. I was apparently the coolest girl on the Colorguard, or so one particularly well-regarded young man told me at a Fall dance on the Quad back in 1989, as we spun around slowly to some long forgotten Madonna song. Alas, that burgeoning romance wasn’t meant to be; someone spit their gum up into the air during the slow dance and it landed in my hair just as the song ended. I ran quickly to the girl’s bathroom, mortified to look that young man in the eye again, my brush with coolness over.
Cool I may not have been, but beautiful, I could pull off sometimes. Or, at least Joe Dimaggio thought so. It was October 17th, 1989, and I stood in tunnel under Candlestick Park, along with about 15 other girls dressed in green polyester bodysuits embellished with gold sequins. We were holding an enormous American flag which we were charged with marching out onto the field and displaying for the National Anthem. It was game 3 of the World Series and Mr. Dimaggio was being transported into the stadium in a golf cart when he commented on our garb. “What a nice man,” I thought, as he drove by. Only later did I find out who he was. Of course, with the confusion that ensued moments later, none of us really knew what was going on with anything. At 5:04 PM, the Loma Prieta earthquake began. That earthquake resulted in the deaths of over 60 people, countless injuries, the collapse of two significant roadways in the San Francisco Bay Area and the destruction of numerous homes and buildings. The earthquake reportedly lasted about 10-15 seconds, but I remember it seeming like an eternity.
Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I had been through countless earthquakes before. But this was the first one that I spent on the underside of a large and somewhat antiquated (at least it is considered as such these days) sports stadium. Candlestick had light poles interspersed around the edge of the stadium, extending probably 30 feet into the air from the top of the structure, with enormous lights stretched out across 3 pole clusters. I remember these poles being painted orange; of course, my memory could be wrong. What I will never forget is the sight of these poles swaying along with the shaking of the earth, thinking how strange it was for them to be moving in such a way. As often happens when surprised by something, my brain didn’t fully register that we had experienced an earthquake until it was ending. By then, I was headed out from under the stadium and into the surrounding parking lots, where myself and my fellow Colorguard officers gathered up our team and watched, waited and fretted in true teenage girl fashion.
For the next hour, we stood in Candlestick’s parking lot and looked out over the partial view of the city, commenting on plumes of smoke rising into the air, wondering just how bad the earthquake was. We hadn’t gotten the full picture of the disaster by that point, and didn’t fully comprehend what we had experienced until we got home to our South Bay area high school some 8 hours later. Panic apparently caused the roadways to fill up quickly and our normally 1 to 2 hour ride home quickly turned into an all night experience. There was a large orange harvest moon that night, something I hadn’t ever seen before, and I remember wondering silently to myself if the world was somehow ending while we sat on that bus.
End it did not, for that I am thankful. However, continued taunts about being a band geek from my husband may result in his lifespan being shortened, or at least being made somewhat more miserable of an experience. It is probably just sour grapes on his part, he was a Varsity Basketball player in high school, they never got performances by the full band, drill team and Colorguard at their halftime shows. And, the cool guy of the fateful Madonna dance, yes, he was at my reunion and we said our hellos. Twenty years later, I am much cooler and still beautiful (or so my husband says), and I haven’t had gum in my hair since that dance. He had to have been impressed.
Post script: I wrote the above about being much cooler 20 years later, completely forgetting about the picture I posted yesterday. Nevermind.
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Great post! I live in Southern CA, so I know about earthquakes too! I always get the feeling like I have to run! Like running would make it all better...! I'm a dork! :)
ReplyDeleteHi jadenotjaded...just got a quick peek at your blog. Awesome. Thanks for stopping by, I will be checking yours out again soon after dinnertime is over!
ReplyDeleteIt's funny you should mention the harvest moon. I remember the moon the night before the earthquake because it was so orange and other-wordly. Also, the day after the earthquake was so muggy and weird!
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by my blog! It is strange to relive it through someone else. I remember all the earthquakes we were in, but this one was just different. It was so short, but it felt like we were standing in our doorway for quite a long time waiting for everything to stop shaking.
ReplyDeleteGreat post!!! I am from India and have never experience such a disaster but I can feel it after reading your post....God bless :)
ReplyDeleteThanks y'all for stopping by. I am enjoying that the MamaKat's thing is allowing me to read others' works and share mine. Yes, it is so strange to read about the earthquake from others perspectives and the moon was probably the thing that stood out most in my mind from that night. The quake did seem to go on forever Chantel! Take care and I look forward to reading more of your writing in the future!
ReplyDelete