I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Mike Monteiro’s recent writing. Heartfelt, honest, and sometimes raw. I don’t know him personally, but I feel like we could be friends if we were geographically close. I read through almost all of his latest post, How to dance through the apocalypse, nodding my head, with the exception of one paragraph.
The Friday after the boombox showed up I took it to the dogpark. And I gotta say, I felt a little ridiculous carrying this very large anachronism in public, almost like I had a fresh Ed Hardy tattoo on my forehead. However, you can’t walk through the dogpark with a three-foot long bright yellow boombox and claim that you were hoping not to be perceived, so I owned it. I got to the bench, fished a tape out of my pocket that I’d found tucked away in a corner of our apartment—Purple Rain—and hit play. Which is when I realized that a forty year old tape sounds like a forty year old tape. With no other option, I switched it to Bluetooth (annoying) and created a playlist of 80s hits on my phone to play through the boombox. Within a few minutes we had a dance party going in the dogpark. By the end of the night, we had a Total Eclipse of the Heart singalong going. (A few weeks later we had a Dolly Parton memorial playlist.)
I can imagine no reality where this happens here in Iowa. I would love it! But honestly all I can think of is how annoyed everyone else in the park would be, and how embarrassed I would be trying to do it. The entire scenario sounds like a scene from a John Hughes movie. Must be a California thing.