So, I did something really strange this week. (perhaps regular readers are used to me doing strange things) An electrician doing work in our house, was listening to the radio and AC/DC was playing. The song was “Big Balls.” This triggered a memory.
For those of you who are not familiar with “Big Balls”, here are the lyrics to the chorus:
I’ve got big balls
I’ve got big balls
And they’re such big balls
Dirty big balls
And he’s got big balls,
And she’s got big balls,
But we’ve got the biggest balls of them all!
The memory that got triggered by this interesting song is that the first time that I heard the “Big Balls” song is when I was introduced to it, late at night, at a sleepover, when I was in elementary school. We were giggling a lot, listening to it, and I am sure that my eyes were the size of saucers but I probably pretended that I already knew the lyrics. What bad-ass little kids, my friends and I must have been! Ha!
So, I thought about the friend who hosted the sleepover. She was one of my best friends in elementary school but we lost touch after that, as we never went to the same schools after elementary school. I remember her being daring, brutally honest and smart as a whip. Now, I don’t go on to Facebook very often, so I decided to just “Google” her name and the first site to come up, was her professional website. Turns out that my elementary school friend is currently a successful tax attorney in Chicago. Even though we haven’t seen each other in 40 years, I immediately recognized the piercing, “see right through you” expression on her face, on her professional, attractive, lawyer-ly picture that came with her bio.
Now, here comes the crazy part. I emailed my friend, at her law firm email address and I entitled the email “Blast from the Past.” I admitted, in my email, that the reason that she came to my mind was because of the “Big Balls” song. I gave a little blurb about my life and I asked how she was doing, hoping that she remembered me and then I sent it before I rationally thought about how weird and desperate and stalker-like the email could come across. (and I sent it to a lawyer . . . )
And then I waited. And then I started thinking rationally and feeling uncomfortable about the whole thing. I mean, people expect you to reach out on venues like Facebook and Instagram and Linked In, but sending a random email to someone you haven’t had contact with, in over 40 years, to their place of employment, discussing a song called “Big Balls”, started to seem a bit “out there”, even for me, the lady who doesn’t embarrass all that easily.
So then I started rationalizing. I allowed myself this crazy blip. This was perhaps, just an unfortunate lack of judgment. I have been very stressed, having my house swarming with workers and dust clouds. I’m probably in some kind of mild midlife crisis. I miss my kids. . . even the kids who still live here. (those of you with teenagers, know what I mean)
I had just finished reading a great book, a thriller, and I got to thinking that even if I didn’t hear back from my elementary school friend, I could turn this whole scenario into an excellent start of a psycho-thriller novel. A bored housewife reaches out on a whim to an old, intriguing friend, who still lives on the edge (remember she’s the one who introduced me to “Big Balls” when we were probably only nine or ten years old) who ends up working for a “law” firm, which secretly does espionage work for the government or the mob or the Russians. And somehow the bored housewife innocently gets involved in all of the intrigue, and has to outsmart the government (easy) or the mob or the Russians (less easy and more dangerous). I realize that this makes for a great premise of a best-selling novel. (and someone out there who is better at writing fiction than me, should definitely steal the idea – it has Hollywood written all over it) Anyway, I started getting overwhelmed thinking about all of the research and fiction writing classes, a book like this would entail, when I noticed that I had a new email message.
It was from my friend, of course. And she remembered me! And she was thrilled to hear from me! And she was glad that I didn’t look for her on Facebook because she, like me, has dropped off of that scene for the most part, too. The best part of the email was that she had recently heard a different AC/DC song (Dirty Deeds) and when she heard that song, she said that she thought about our fifth grade picnics and she reminded me of a few more people that were good childhood comrades who I had long forgotten about. She laughed about us listening to “Big Balls” at her house and she said while she doesn’t remember the instance, she now realizes that it was “wildly inappropriate”. (her words) I thought about that and I thought that probably a less “wildly inappropriate” song would not have stuck in my memory and I would not have likely reached out to her, forty years later and experienced some really nice email exchanges and fond laughs and impressions, about shared childhood memories.
I think that this is how the Universe works. The Universe does not know time. The Universe does know that “wildly inappropriate” can be used in wildly appropriate ways to bring joy and remembrance and connection to people, perhaps when they need those feelings the most. At the very least, I don’t regret my “Big Balls” decision to email my long, lost friend.