Saturday, January 31, 2009

Best Day EVER!

So the excitement has not waned since this morning. I am still just as excited now as I was when I posted this morning, and still a little bit in disbelief that I was standing in the same ballroom today as Buddy Holly did nearly 50 years ago. You may be asking yourself why I am so excited or how I even know anything about Buddy Holly, well it all began on a school night many many years ago....
The year was 1991 and my mother (the awesome gal she is) let me watch The Buddy Holly story, starring Gary Busey. I remember vividly watching it and realizing that it was way past my bedtime but mom let me stay up anyway, so I could watch the end. As she tucked me into bed that night she told me that she has one of Buddy Holly's albums and that I could listen to it sometime. I am pretty sure that I started listening to them the very next day after school. So after listening to the record for a while, skips and all, my mother transferred the record from the record player onto a blank tape so I could take it with me in a new Walkman anywhere. I remember listening to them all the time, memorizing the music word for word, skips and all. I would go roller skating around our Texas subdivision all the time, my sisters and I would choreograph dance shows to the songs. My personal favorite was jumping off, probably an antique, table or buffet right when Buddy Holly starts singing at the beginning of "Oh Boy", still one of my favorite songs to this day. Fast forward to years later, we live in Iowa now and I was in Carrol for some reason, in a CD shop, and I found two CDs of Buddy Holly's. I bought them with my own money, and was oblivious to the incredulous look the clerk probably had on his/her face at the surprise of a 13 year old buying a Buddy Holly CD. I now vividly remember having to relearn all of the words to the Buddy Holly songs, without the skips. My sisters and I had a whole new set of songs to choreograph. Only at this point in our life, we were hooked on figure skating from the 1994 winter Olympics, so instead of dancing we would figure skate (with socks) around our large living room, moving furniture when necessary. Our favorite song to skate to then-"Raining in my Heart". You can rest assured that our kids have already learned how to carpet skate to this song!



Even with all of these great memories, today has definitely been the highlight of years and years of devotion to a man that died when my mother was 4. It was so amazing being around people that also love Buddy Holly and his legend and it was cool to listen to the stories they had to tell about his life and what they knew about him. Also, to stand in such a historic place was truly awe inspiring. The highlight of my day had to be shaking the hands of the original Crickets, after standing in line for like an hour, it was finally my turn to get something signed, and talk to them and I was completely speechless! Finally I just said, "You guys are awesome and I love you guys!" It was pretty neat! Another cool thing was getting my picture taken with a Buddy Holly look alike.

It was really neat to get to pass this down to my own children. So many people came up to us and talked to us because of our children, but one especially stood out; he said thank you to us for bringing them and told us to make sure they grow up with this music in their lives. Don't worry, sir, I will do my best to pass down the awesome gift that my mom passed down to me, thanks again Mom. You Rock!

4 comments:

  1. Wow, Gen. What an awesome memory for your children. This is what life is made of.. Good stuff like reading your blog. :) I love it.

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  2. Thanks! Hopefully I can get the pictures up soon!

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  3. How awesome! I love the kids' shirts the most...those rock!

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  4. I'm sorry if I ruined your fun by calling you a nerd... =P I'm glad you had fun!!

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