Before These Crowded Memories...

What a day for sports yesterday! Unbeaten Illinois finally went down, my UK Wildcats choked in the waning seconds at Florida, UNC beat dUKe, Tiger rallied to beat Phil Mickelson in the final pairing at Doral, and WKU won their first game in the Sunbelt tournament. All was good except UK losing. I was a little upset after the loss, and I decided to go for a run. Besides, it was a glorious day outside and it would be a great way to work off the frustration. So I grabbed my mp3 player and threw on some shorts and was out the door.

There is a park about a quarter of a mile from my apartment, and I headed there first. The park has a 1-mile trail through a wooded area, and it was a perfect place to start. On the mp3 player, I selected my favorite album of all time, Before These Crowded Streets by the Dave Matthews Band. Everytime I listen to this album I take a trip down memory lane.



Being a member of the BMG cd club several times, I accumulated a serious stack of free CD's during my high school days. One of the cd's I randomly picked was DMB's Crash album. I loved their songs on the radio, and I instantly fell in love with the entire album. Skip forward several months later to the first month of my freshman year in college. Several of my buddies wanted to go see the band in Nashville and they asked me to go along. I went and absolutely loved it! They had just released a new cd (Before These Crowded Streets) and played several songs from it. I went the very next day to buy the new cd. It stayed in my car cd player for weeks. They've been my favorite band ever since that first concert I attended.

The reason that this cd stands out for me is because I was going through a large and somewhat difficult transition period in my life, and the cd was a form of comfort for me. I had moved away from home and into an apartment in Bowling Green close to WKU's campus. A high school friend was my roommate for two weeks. He decided that moving away from home was too hard for him, and he moved back to Scottsville and commuted to school. Luckily for me, he agreed to pay his part of the rent through the rest of the semester. So for my first semester of college, I had a 2 bedroom apartment all to myself. It was during this semester that I really learned how to fend for myself. I learned how to burn food, pay bills, go to school and hold down a job.

Luckily for me I had 2 new best friends at my job. I worked all summer at The Trace at Bays Fork, a local golf course. I became instant friends with Derick and Tyler who also worked there. If it weren't for them I would have had a long and lonely semester. We had so much fun on that job and I have many hilarious memories. What's your favorite memory D? I think mine might be the time I missed hitting a hole-in-one by 6 inches at that tournament where I would have won a new truck. Or the times we sang "White Christmas" from Home Alone in the middle of a hot summer day. And how could I forget the drunk lady that showed me her boobs?

Derick and Tyler lived only 200 yards apart and their families soon seemed like a part of my own family. Since I couldn't cook very well, I would take turns eating supper at their houses. I was super skinny back then and they wouldn't let me go hungry for anything.

Winter soon came and it was time to move out of my apartment. I found a friend from high school that needed a roommate at the dorms, and so I moved in with him and a whole new chapter of my life started. But it was that first semester of my college life, from August of 1998 until December, that I have some of my fondest memories. It was a time of change, learning and a little loneliness.

As I jogged along the trail through the forest to the beats of Before These Crowded Streets, I couldn't help but smile as I thought back.