Neato Mosquito

I got to be SO cool today.

Back in January, Kellie showed me this cool Anti-Flag poster for the show we were going to see. I went ahead and bought one online & had it shipped to Kellie’s house. We decided against carrying the posters to the concert to have them signed, because we didn’t want to lug them around. Kellie, in her infinite smarty-pants-ness, decided to send our posters to them via mail, with a letter asking them to sign them for us.

I should pause here to tell you that Kellie is the QUEEN of doing stuff like this, and I never think to do it, so I’m so glad I have her as a friend.

Kellie writes this great letter to Anti-Flag, talking about how I came up from Alabama, and we drove the couple hours to D.C. just to see them, and how they’re awesome, etc. She also included this really cool line about how we enjoyed their set because they talked about hope, and how anger without action is a useless emotion. She is so punk rock.

A few weeks later, Anti-Flag mails the posters back to Kellie with a letter. The letter is from their manager-type-dude (Kel, correct me if I’m wrong) that says how he read the letter to the guys & they loved it. They thanked us for coming all that way to see their show, and they all signed our posters. The M-T-D also included some guitar picks that he’d picked up after the band practiced one night, cause he thought we might like them. There were six of them, so Kellie mailed me three along with my poster.

Since Nicholas (a co-workers son) had been cool enough to burn me an Anti-Flag CD before I went to Virginia, I thought it’d be pretty rad to pass along a guitar pick. I told Kim (his mom) about it, and she thought he would love it. She even let me tell him about it myself, so I could see his face, which was really fun. He’s a teenager, so I only got about 3 seconds of wide-eyed exuberance before he went back to being crazy ninja cool.

Today was the first day that the picks were in my purse, and Nicholas was in the office at the same time. I’d barely sat down in my office before he appeared, looking so excited. I dug them out of my purse and let him pick out which one he wanted. There were 2 black ones & 1 red one, and I let him pick between the black ones. There was one pick that said “War Sucks, Let’s Party!” that I really kinda wanted… but I’m 32, and he’s 15... so I figured if he wanted it, he could have it. I was glad when he didn't pick that one, though. hee!

He was genuinely thrilled, and told me about how he’d told a few of his friends about it and they were “Soooo jealous”. He said he couldn't wait to show it to them and brag about it. Then he said he’s gonna make me a Street Dogs cd. (I have no idea who they are)

I had to give props to Kellie, though. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have gone to the concert, gotten the poster, mailed it to get it signed, and surely wouldn’t have secured any guitar picks. It’s hard to take credit for her coolness, but I’m trying. It’s really rough. I think I might need someone to throw one of those James Brown capes over my shoulders until I can regain my strength and come back for the big finish.

Thank you, Kel. Your friendship is like one of those side view mirrors. Objects reflected by you appear cooler than they actually are.

~