In My Next Life

I always said that in my next life I’d like to be a back up singer, the one in the slinky dress who stands off to the side swaying and singing harmony. So a few years ago when my twenty-three year old daughter asked if I wanted to accompany her on a weekend gig with her band I was ecstatic. If I couldn’t be a back up singer at least I could be a 52 year-old groupie.
You might be asking why I aspired to just be in the background instead of reincarnating as a Janis Joplin or an Aretha Franklin. Well, first of all, Janis over-dosed and Aretha gained about two hundred pounds. Who was I to think I could handle the success if these two icons couldn’t? Also by staying in the shadows I could still enjoy all the perks of fame without that pressure.
A few weeks later the two of us were following the band’s van towards Fort Walton Beach. Their dated and dented vehicle was stuffed with drums, guitars and seven other musicians. We pulled up in front of bar with the proverbial neon beer signs welcoming us. As I helped them unpack my daughter’s boy friend, the bass player, explained to me that their band, Pop Canon, wouldn’t even play until around 11 pm, after the first band had finished.
Around midnight I was sitting at the bar drinking a Schlitz and watching my baby girl belting out her song, “Fuck you, fuck you, you broke my heart.” I pondered the coincidences of life. Had my dreams influenced her to spend weekends this way?
An hour and a half later the last song exploded through the amplifiers. Ah, done at last. While I discreetly removed the wadded up pieces of napkin from my ears, the band began taking apart their sound equipment and instruments. Around 2:30 a.m. I asked her if we were ready to go. “No, Mom,” she said, holding a few CD’s and pairs of socks and underwear with their Punk Rock Idiot logo silk screened on them,
“I still have to sell the merchandise.”
It wasn’t until we got to her car around 3:30 that I discovered there were no motel reservations. So we drove down the dark Florida highway for about an hour counting “NO Vacancy” signs. Finally, about halfway to Pensacola we pulled into a Super 8. As the van sat idling, we walked into the office. “Do you have your AARP card?” my young daughter whispered as we approached the sleepy-eyed man behind the desk. “We’ll need two rooms … for six.” my daughter requested causally.
Our room had two double beds. At 5:30 am as my daughter and I got into one bed and the lead guitar and bass player got into the other, I wondered how the other seven people were doing in the room next door. But I didn’t feel guilty at all having an entire double bed almost all to myself. In fact it was at that moment that I decided that in my next life I’d rather return as a bird.