My rebuttal to an asshole…

What can a guy say to a comment like this?

You are such a fucking loser! “Dave’s concerts!?” Are you serious!? “Yea, man, that Dave show ruled last week!”

It doesn’t really deserve a response, but in lieu of the passing of Dave’s bandmate, I think I will tell a nice little story instead. 

I think I was in the Navy underway 1994 ish.  There was a Nuke EM5 sitting with a few guys in the galley of the Minneapolis St. Paul.  We were leaving port navigating the channels of Norfolk, Va.  I can’t remember the specific weather that day, but I remember it being daytime maybe late morning actually sometime cool, possibly early spring.  There is nothing like heading out to sea off the shores of Norfolk on a beautiful spring day when the fog has burned off, there is a chill in the air, not enough to warrant a jacket, but enough to keep you from sweating as you heave the lines off the bow. 

If I close my eyes I can see the kid sitting right across from me, talking about DMB.  He had one of those multi-colored woven rope bracelets on his wrist that you get from a girl in highschool and never take off until it breaks.  He was nothing like most of the “nukes” on board.  He was sort of down to earth.  Not into owning his own mortar rounds, into dungeon’s and dragon’s or lamenting about how he can’t wait to machine his own ring underway.  With my eyes still closed I can see him talking, brown hair, 20 years old; his back was to the entertainment equipment, that was used for movie nights.  We were all leaning this way and that with the rolls of the waves in the shallow channell.  Our ships colors were blue and gold (De’s colors too) and the galley’s table covers were this pleather blue like stuff that wiped down easy. 

I don’t know how we got to talking about music.  But we were talking about this band and that band.  Most likely trying to one up each other when it came to who knew what about music.  All just to show the other guy we were cool too in that macho young boy way.  I don’t know the band I mentioned but he was going on about this band from Charlotte.  They had played right down the road not too long ago.  He had seen them while he was in college.  He raved about them, how they were this awesome jam style band.  Wait!  I know! I think we had talked about the Dead and how I passed up a chance to see them in 1991.  (dumb mistake…I saw The Who at the Vet for some stupid farewell tour, the Dead though…I passed on… what a maroon sheesh)  So that was when I was first sort of introduced to them.  I don’t recall them getting much air time in Norfolk or really hearing that much about them for the next couple years.   

As a side not to that story. I believe within a few days of talking about DMB, he almost got killed on our way out to sea.  He went to test the charge on the batteries that powered the ship when we went off nuclear power.  He wasn’t paying attention and put one hand down on a positive terminal and I believe his other hand on a different terminal of another battery.  Luckily the current passed through him and knocked him on his ass, it didn’t kill him, scared the crap out of him, but didn’t kill him.  They were big ass batteries that weighed about a ton.  They were charged from the massive “Diesel”.  It was normal maintenance done once a month or so to make sure the batteries held their charge and didn’t need to be replaced.  That was when I also learned that out to sea on a submarine depending on the mission you are on, the dead guys get stored in the freezer.  The same freezer that the meat is stored for dinners.  nice…

I went a few years after that never having bought an album or listening to Dave.  I remember coming home from the Navy in June of 1996 a few months after Crash had come out and trying to make sense of the video on MTV.  I don’t know when I bought the album, but it sure wasn’t that video that turned me onto the song.  It was those lyrics man.  They were spiritual in a sense, not just “Crash into me”, but all of the lyrics.  The album had/has such a great flow.  I can’t believe I left it off my 5 albums on a desert island question to be honest.   The tempo of the album dictates your mood from high to low and back to higher for the entire 50 some minutes.  God, what an album….

I constantly played the album in my house in 1996 and 1997 and still do every few months or so.  I was still somewhat married at that time, and I believe the wife and I went to a show that September of 1996 at the then named Camden E-Center.  I guess her mother watched the girls for us.  What a show, the entire crowd singing “Ant’s Marching”, “Satellite”, “crash into me” “#43”, listening to the encore of “Dancing Nancies” and “Tripping Billies”.  It was by far one of the best concerts I had ever been too.  It ranked up there with having seen Metallica at the Spectrum.  Leaving the show with a horse voice, ringing ears and still wishing he wishing he would have played for another 3 hours. 

I also remember having “cleaning parties” like we did in the Navy only with the girls and a little more fun.  The  cleaning parties in the navy were on Sunday and sometimes depending on where we were patrolling they would put on music over the speaker system for us.  Back in Delaware, we would all listen to music and clean the house at our pace and I would usually enjoy it with a beer.  Some of the girls would get buckets of soapy water and use rags to do the baseboards, some got to spray the windows with the windex bottle all the while I vaccummed and moved from kid to kid helping them clean their area. 

We would break every once in a while to dance.  I would grab the girls and just start dancing.  They were all still young enough to be picked up then and wanted to be picked up too.  I would have to take turns holding one with one arm, then holding ones hand and then managing to keep the other one occupied and not get too jealous of not being picked up.  #3 could barely walk so she got held the most.  We would swing around and around and dance and dance.  They smiled so big.  I can still see #2 just beaming.  Gosh, those eyes when she smiled…it warms my heart and brings me an unfamiliar feeling.  A feeling that as a young parent and as a child with a less than happy childhoold.  I think the feeling is called happiness.  It is hard to identify when someone else experiences it so innocently and unadulterated.  In my opinion being able to make a child happy, laugh, smile and just be totally elated is one of the best feelings in the world.  To have her #2, smile and get lost in the moment sticks with me to this day.  To see her smile and not know anything about the life around her brings about mixed emotions.  To not know that her mother and father were on the road to a divorce a few months later, that we were fighting like cat’s and dog’s 90% of the time were were together.  To not know we lived in a decaying neighborhood that I was too afraid to let them play on the porch for fear of being shot.  To not know that we were a hair above poverty and it was only due to qualifying for government assistance that I was able to afford the milk, eggs and cereal we ate for breakfast and sometimes dinner.  They didn’t know it, they just knew they were happy, dancing with their father. 

I never thought of myself as cool back then dancing around the house with them begging, “pick ME up daddy….please”.  I just wanted to teach my girls the power of music.  How I enjoyed it.  It was a release for me.  It always will  be.  I find solace in music and I want the girls to be able to as well.  You don’t need to be rich to be able to appreciate so many things in life.  You just have to know how to have fun. How to get lost in a moment and not worry about life.  Not worry that some ahole is going to judge you.  Not worry that there are people out there that don’t care about you, your children, your neighbors children and the thousands of children living within a few miles of you.  That what happens to them is irrelevant, that what happens to them is their lot in life and so be it.  

I will never forget dancing around with them in their cute little Barbie and Elmo jammies.  Their beaming  eyes looking up, reaching for daddy and wanting to dance.  So no, I don’t say to my daughter’s, ““Yea, man, that Dave show ruled last week!”   I am told by my daughter’s, remember when we danced to Dave Matthews Dad?