Last month, my family said goodbye to my aunt Sandy.  In the last few weeks of her life, she had suffered from a form of dementia.  Memories are my love and passion.  Not to say I’m a person who lives in the past, but I taught history for a decade and I have a pretty good autobiographical memory, so memories are my jam.

Watching someone struggle with recalling where they are, what year it is, or understanding their reality is my greatest fear realized. I can’t imagine not being able to go back and mentally revisit all the lessons I’ve learned and the incredibly precious moments I’ve experienced.

I have this little piece of the internet to write.  I know I totally never use it, but this experience has made me feel more committed than ever to share my little stories and if anyone thinks they are worth reading, well, God bless you.

So, without further procrastination, here I go with my little story for today…

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It certainly wasn’t an every summer tradition, but for most summers of my life, I’ve spent one glorious week in Destin, FL with my mom’s family, which totals out to about 24-26 people.  Sometimes, mom’s paternal cousins join in on the fun, which takes us well over 30.  We are talking “EVENT OF THE YEAR” for our family.

These summers hold some of the most cherished memories I have.  When we were all a lot younger, the week would include not only beach time, but we’d drive the 40 minutes down 98 to Panama City Beach and spend the evening/night at Miracle Strip Amusement Park (which sadly no longer exists).  The summer before my senior year of high school (1999), my mom let me bring two friends to Florida because I was a brat who didn’t want to hang out with all of my cousins (who are all at least 6 years younger than me… lame) and I wasn’t cool enough to hang out with my 21 year old brother.

When we went to Miracle Strip Amusement Park that year, we thought we were some total badasses.  We were wearing our “Senior Honeys” t-shirts and just knew we were the coolest 3 people in the whole park. (Side note: we were not.)

We did the Starliner Roller Coaster, which was the main attraction, as well as some of the other fair/carnival type rides and then we walked down to where this spooky/haunted house attraction was.  Right outside of the attraction was a little booth called “Scary-oke” with a small stage, some cute young dude running the booth, and three microphones. ‘Twas destiny.

We sang, with the purest conviction in our hearts, “Margaritaville” and “Brown Eyed Girl.”  Now, let me take a moment to be quite clear.  We were terrible.  I can’t really speak for my friends, but if I am belting out a song in public, you can be quite certain that it is probably totally not on key.  But… a slight crowd did develop around us and the cute booth operator KEPT LETTING US SING, so you might as well have labeled us rock stars in my mind.  I just remember it as one of the best nights of my young life.  I had my two best friends, we were total rock stars of “Scary-oke”, the cute guy kept letting us do our thing, we were wearing our “Senior Honeys” t-shirts, we had tans…..  *sigh* it was pure bliss.

I would say that I am thankful 99% of the time that I grew up before smart phones and social media, but this is one of those 1% moments that I totally wish we would have had a picture/video of this epic night!  Then again, my karaoke never needs to be recorded…