insects, football, and salsa dancing.

Nashville, Tennessee has a plethora of wonderful free events taking place on any given day.
One of the places where local folk often find free events is a park near Vanderbilt's campus called Centennial Park.
It hosts festivals, outdoor movies, art/dance classes, and concerts, among many other things.

Centennial Park's most recognizable landmark is a to-scale replica of the iconic Parthenon in Athens, Greece.


That structure was the instigator of this story's adventure.


My roommate had a friend in town for the weekend who was a middle school history teacher. She found it interesting that we have a replica of the Parthenon in Nashville, so she suggested we head over to Centennial Park.

So we went to the park.
There were four of us in all, and we arrived just in time for free dance lessons.

We learned to salsa dance (along with dozens of retirees) for about 30 minutes, but quickly got bored and snuck out the back.


We meandered around the park, and as the sunlight began to fade, we realized that the Parthenon was lit up a bit brighter than usual.

Suddenly, we became insects around a light: we had no choice but to walk toward the shining Parthenon.

As we got closer, we heard music.

So we kept walking.

There was a barricade of police cars.

And we kept walking. Right through the barricade.

There was a huge tent with circular tables set up inside.

We kept walking.

We walked all the way up to the steps of the Parthenon, where a wedding reception was taking place.

Inspired by the salsa classes we'd just taken, we joined the people dancing at the reception.

As we were dancing, we took a good look at the overall demographic of the other people at the reception in hopes of figuring out whose wedding we were unexpectedly attending.

The only consistent theme of the wedding guests was that they all appeared to have plenty of money.

There was no rhyme or reason to their age, race, etc.

We continued our investigation: whose wedding were we at?

We noticed a photo slideshow just outside the tent with the tables, so we headed that direction.

Sure enough, we found a significant clue: one of the photos was of a guy (presumably the groom, who we hadn't been brave enough to interact with) wearing a Titans football uniform, and three women (probably his mom, sister, and now-wife) who were all wearing the same jersey with the number 23 on it.

I looked up the Titans' roster on my iPhone as we danced our way back to the reception area, and then googled biographical information about #23. Sure enough, Titans safety Donnie Nickey had recently proposed to his long-time girlfriend.

And I crashed their wedding.

Weddings: yet another free event found at Centennial Park.

duct tape, shake weights, and teddy bears.

by Trey

It was a rainy Wednesday in Music City, and some friends and I decided to temporarily forgo the protective normalcy of our college campus to buy some college essentials at the local Walmart.

[you know, Ramen noodles, Nerf guns, and the like.] 

We were making our way around the store, and I stopped in the paint section--as I always do--to look at the duct tape to see if they had come out with any new colors or designs that I could add to my collection. 

(Yes, I shamelessly collect duct tape, and I make things out of it. 104 rolls and counting, suckas!)

My friends were in various aisles around me during this time, when I went to find them.  We all met up around the lighting aisle, and went back to wandering the store.

Something happened in that lighting aisle, however. 

The cheap lamps and bulbs had mysteriously transformed us into four-year-olds, rather than the knowledge-thirsty collegiate academics we truly are.

This, friends, can get you into trouble. 

Touching items on the shelves, grabbing pillows, and making stupid jokes about useless products that were given the label “as seen on TV.”  

{i.e. the “Shake Weight.”  What. The. Heck.}

It was the Christmas season, so random carts had been left around the store filled with toys and other items for sale.  

As we were gallivanting around the store acting “less than our actual age” (and when I say “we,” I mostly just mean “I”), I saw one of those carts filled with random items, including a particularly black, soft, and fluffy-looking teddy bear.

I neared the cart, and reached out to touch this bear on its head. 

Suffice it to say, not everything is as it seems.  

The instant this teddy bear's head moved, I no longer saw a bear but instead, a very small Hispanic child, who had been innocently riding in his parents' shopping cart.

As my hand touched his head, his face turned toward mine, and I realized what I had just done.  

I screamed and quickly vacated the area, not looking anywhere but forward.

I'll never know if that child's parents saw me approach their boy as though he were a billy goat in a petting zoo.

And you know what? 

You have never lived in complete fear until you accidentally pet a stranger’s head, not knowing if that small stranger’s parents saw you.

And that was the time I pet a child at Walmart.

donuts, Xanga, and a band called The Elms.

When you're eighteen, 22-year-olds are very old, and they live the most fabulous lives imaginable.


During my freshman year of college, my best friend dated a boy named Jeff who was four years older than we were. He lived in a house with 4 roommates, all of whom were professional musicians.

In my eighteen-year-old brain,
professional musician = famous.

Obviously.


Throughout the course of their relationship, I spent an embarrassing amount of time hoping I'd get the coveted invite to hang out at Jeff's house with his rockstar roommates.


One night in late September, I received the phone call I'd been longing for:

For the first time ever, I'd been invited to go to Jeff's house.
From there, a small group of people would walk over to a donut shop, which served as a local watering hole of sorts.
[when you go to a private Christian school in a small town, you have to get creative about where you hang out.]

I finally had my chance: even if none of Jeff's roommates were home, I could truthfully brag that I'd been to their house!

Who cares if his "famous" roommates didn't know I exist? I'd still been to the house.

Instant street cred.

Well. I arrived at the house, and lo and behold, one of Jeff's roommates was home.
{Bonus points.}

This particular roommate played in a now-defunct Christian rock band called The Elms.
{Even better.}


Now, please hear me out: 
I understand that the words "Christian rock band" are synonymous with "tiny niche market."
But in my eighteen-year-old mind, "Christian rock band" meant "coolest and most important humans on the planet."
After all, they had a song on WOW2002.
It doesn't get much better than that.

When I say "rockstar", you say "HALLELUJAH":

"Rockstar!"

(HALLELUJAH!)

Somehow, I managed to squelch my internal freakout when I was introduced to this internationally acclaimed superstar, and I didn't even betray my underlying elation when I learned that he was coming to the donut shop with us.

So we went to the donut shop. There were four of us.
And I felt invincible. I was with someone of extreme importance.
I had to savor every moment: this was most certainly a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity!


Truth be told, he and I barely interacted that night, but nobody else had to know that: I'd gotten donuts with the guitarist from The Elms, and that was all that mattered.

So of course, I blogged about it.
On my Xanga.
Because it was 2005.


And oh, was it a glorious blog post!
Not only did I release every iota of giddiness that I'd suppressed while in mega-celeb Thom's presence, I also posted a photo of the band and labeled which one he was.

After all, there was no way my overenthusiasm would ever get back to him: he didn't have time to perform menial tasks like peruse the blogosphere; he was clearly consumed with celebrity things like hanging out with Usher or Avril Lavigne.

And that, my dear friends, was where I guessed wrong.

Not even 48 hours later, I had a post on my blog entry from señor guitar god himself, expressing that he'd enjoyed the post.



I was mortified.

I'd tried so hard to play it cool!
I hadn't let on that I even knew who his band was!
How could I ever become one of the cool kids who hung out with rockstars, if the rockstars themselves knew how overzealous I was about hanging out with them?!


I sheepishly responded to his comment, and he was completely gracious about it.
We commented back and forth on one another's Xangas for an hour or so.
He assuaged my paranoia of having come across as a superfan, and reassured me that he was just an average person who happened to make his living by making music.


And, in an interesting turn of events, we eventually became actual real friends.

Thank you Xanga.

lifeguards and groomless weddings.

I've been a professional pianist for over a decade now, and as a result, I've had some memorable piano-related experiences.

I've played a half-broken keyboard on a balcony in Haiti for a group of hut-dwelling onlookers below.
I've played for a wedding that included a snake as a bridesmaid.
I've played for an audience that included Roger Daltry from The Who.

But there's one wedding that takes the cake.



The bride was the daughter of missionaries to Haiti, and the groom was a career lifeguard from south Florida, so it only made sense that the wedding was held next to lifeguard stand #3 on Fort Lauderdale Beach.

I flew down to sunny south Florida the day before the wedding, and everything was set up as it should be: rows of chairs faced the ocean; a keyboard and sound system had been hooked up to a generator; music stands were placed strategically where readers and the officiant would be standing.

The time for the wedding came, and the guests had all been seated. I was playing prelude music, and everything was going quite smoothly.

Too smoothly.

I made eye contact with the groom, and he nodded. I started playing the song we'd agreed upon for the seating of the parents, and he began his journey down the aisle with his mom in tow.

And then he stopped, dead in his tracks.

About five rows from the back, both the groom and his mother were frozen in place.

Was he alright?

Was she alright?

Was I playing the wrong song?

What was going on?

The groom turned to his mom, said something, and then ran out into the ocean.

Well this was new.
We most certainly hadn't scripted an abrupt departure of one of the event's key people.
Where was he going? Was he coming back?


As I turned around to see what the groom was doing, I saw a man running toward him from the ocean with an unconscious little girl in his arms.

Of course. I should've guessed that the groom was saving a life.
That's typical wedding protocol, right?


We now had an audience who was expecting to be watching a wedding, but were suddenly watching a lifeguard rescue.


As the pianist for the wedding, what was I to do?

Was I supposed to keep playing as though everything was normal? (It clearly wasn't normal.)
Was I supposed to stop the music out of respect for the situation? (After all, ocean rescues don't typically have a soundtrack.)
Was I supposed to start playing the theme from Jaws?

I opted for choice A: I continued to play background music as a hundred people watched the groom act as a lifeguard in the midst of his own wedding.


Twenty minutes later, the groom returned to his wedding, and the rest of the day continued without a hitch. The little girl had simply slipped and fallen while playing in the ocean, and was unconscious, but otherwise fine.


And for the bride?
She was entirely unaware anything had happened.