Five Nights Meme

Marie Millard tagged me for a meme several weeks ago, and I'm just now getting around to playing. Hey, I didn't forget, I'm just a bit bottlenecked in every aspect of my life right now. Plus, this was a hard meme:

I'm supposed to tell you about 5 memorable nights in my life.

This was hard! It's both difficult to come up with 5, and to narrow it down to 5. Here's what I came up with, then, in no particular order:

1. 9 years ago or so, Brian and I discovered around midnight that a meteor shower was predicted. We called my best friend Lori, gathered her up, and high-tailed it out to the country.

We stood outside waiting, and freezing, until I remembered a bag in the car with some walking supplies: a hat, a sweatshirt, and an odd, tubular lambs-wool garment, meant to pull over your head and wear around your neck. Brian got the sweatshirt, Lori got the hat, and I got the "thing." I chose to wear it on my head, giving the visual effect of an Abe-Lincoln stove-pipe hat, much to Lori and Brian's amusement. We then figured out that there was no wind, closer to the ground...

So there I was, with my kid and my best friend, freezing and lying face up in a cornfield, wearing a stove-pipe hat, while we all laughed our heads off.

We never saw a single meteor, but we still laugh about that night.

2. One year ago, meeting blogger friends Wendy and Kristin in Columbus OH for a Girl's Weekend. It was too, too much fun, and one amazing evening with new friends. Read about it here.

3. Reminiscing, I remember any summer Saturday night, in the late 70s, standing directly on a silent racetrack, waiting for the National Anthem to end before my dad started the engine on his dragster.

4. I will never forget the night that Brian boarded the plane that was to take him on in to Iraq. Minutes left, he called his Dad, who in turn called me. Brian's fear. Our tears. That sickening, helpless feeling.

5. Three years ago, the winter after my divorce was final. I was home alone one Friday night, and decided to take a walk in the snow. I didn't bother changing out of pajamas, just tucked them into my galoshes, threw on a down coat and the same long stocking that Lori borrowed in entry #1, and went out.

While walking around, then new-friend Ilaiy phoned to see what was up, and when I told him where I was, drove over and picked me up. We drove around, watched sledders at Orchard Downs, and continued on for awhile before Ilaiy decided he was hungry, and wanted to go to Steak N Shake. I resisted, but he convinced me no one cared...

At 11 p.m. on Friday night, then, I found myself, during a snowstorm, wearing my pajamas and big ugly ass pair of boots, and a ridiculous stocking cap with a pompom on the end, in a Steak N Shake restaurant, while I sipped on a milkshake. I wasn't married any more, my kid was off at a party somewhere, and Ilaiy was right: in this town full of students, no one blinked an eye at my PJs.

And, I was going to be just fine.