Shirt Tales Session 1: High Voltage

Let me start by saying, that the story (that I’m just about to tell you) is true.

As such, it involves some screaming (on my part) swearing, a kiss and some tongue action.

(It happened.)

It also involves cannabis, an international Steemit friendship and very loud (kind of screeching) hard rock/blues music.

I think it’s the longest post that I have ever written and I apologize for taking the better part of a week to write it.

What can I say? Life is complicated sometimes.

If you’re good with all that, please be my guest and stick around for the complete dog and pony show.

It was Friday night.

I had just driven home from work and at the last minute, I decided to carry on a little further and go and pick up our mail...

(What? Doesn’t everyone look forward to going to pick up their mail on a Friday night?...Really, it was the highlight of my whole week. Yeah, that happens too, once you’ve put some age behind you. You’ll get excited about experiences that break up the monotony of your regular habits. If you’re not there yet, you probably will be soon enough. No rush.)

Actually it was somewhat significant because our mail is a little tricky to get at the moment. Our community mailbox is on the other side of a large river. The bridge (that normally spans over it) was taken out for retrofitting last October and hasn’t been replaced yet.

As a direct result there has been a temporary walking path (through the construction zone) and a small bridge installed for foot traffic only.

Think of it like an obstacle course of sorts...one that takes a wee bit of agility and time to complete and that’s what getting the mail is like these days.

You have to have your wits about you so that you don’t fall into the drink or, get in the way of the construction project itself, because of a few misguided steps.

I safely made it to our mail-box and discovered that I had received a parcel!

(Now I was expecting this package to arrive eventually but there was some question around just where it was, exactly. The last time that I tracked it, it was still sitting on a custom agent’s desk, on the boarder between the USA and Canada so I was very surprised that it had cleared customs and found its way to me already.)

Once I got home, I opened it.

The package was from @bluelightbandit!

(If you haven’t found his blog yet, please go visit it. The man has more guitars and guns than anyone I know. He’s also great at blowing shit up if you like a good explosion every once in awhile.)

Over the course of the last year, he has become one of my dearest Steemit friends.

You see, we have a lot in common.

We think similarly and we share many of the same hobbies (love of music, target shooting, silver, writing, photography etc).

We also have both been afflicted by the same autoimmune disease.

A disease that randomly robes our bodies of physical function and independence over time.

Both of us were taken out of the game of life in our prime.

(This translates to: sometime in our thirties, which was a few years ago, because we’re both in our forties now. )

Anyway, the disease process forced us to give up our professional careers just as we were fast-tracking to the top.

(He, as a decorated Law Enforcement Officer and I, as a therapist and General Manger of a large destination spa.)

Being reclusive is in this equation too.

You simply no longer have “working in the traditional sense" in common with your original friends and colleagues. As a result, the tendency is to withdraw from connecting with them and you drift apart once the common ground is lost, between you.

Life just changes and you either move on and change yourself or, you get stuck looping in your past history.

Isolated and left to your own devices, you can’t help but wonder when the next attack will hit and whether you’ll be able to recover the function, you lost. It’s tough and it’s really hard for people to understand unless they too have experienced it, first hand.

Most people with Multiple Sclerosis suffer in silence. A person with MS just does whatever they need to, in order to survive it mentally, emotionally and physically.

The silver lining in all of this is Steemit.

It brings people together and gives us all opportunities to help each other in ways, that would never likely happen otherwise.

It’s fair to say, that the Bandit and I are damn lucky to have found each other. We understand intimately what the other is going through and for that, I am and will be forever grateful.

Talk about finding a needle in a haystack because that’s about the equivalency in the great big sea, that is Steemit.

Enough of the sap.

Let’s open the damn box already and see just what my mischievous friend has sent me all the way from North Carolina, USA.

This is the front of a very cool t-shirt.

I decided to show you a close up of the logo. It belongs to a rock band that @bluelightbandit went to see recently. He thought that I would get a kick out of the band’s name because it contains one of my favourite types of cannabis.

Indica

It turns out that Vel Indica is an actual constellation.

(Yeah, no kidding.)

But wait there was more...

@bluelightbandit gave me a Vel Indica CD to go with the shirt, and a 2018 Steem Silver Round Communi-Tree.

What can I say? Damn! My brother from another mother has good taste.

That wasn’t the coolest thing in the box though...

@bluelightbandit had a customer t-shirt made (just for me) with his own logo that he personally designed.

The shirt says:

• proudly made in North Carolina, USA
• Bluelightbandit
• shoots straight every time!
• Non ducor, duco underneath, which is Latin and translates to: "I am not led, I lead"
• then, to anchor all of that, Steemit is the last message.

@knarly327 (who’s my husband) and I had been invited by another couple (who we’ve known for a few years) to go to an outdoor festival to see a hard rock band, the next day.

Naturally, I was quite excited about my new Bluelightbandit shirt and decided (on the spot) that I would wear it to the concert on Saturday.

(Good thing I made the decision (when I did) to retrieve the mail!)

Our friends had arranged for a whole group of people to go.

Including the two of us, there were 10 adults (most of whom were in their early fifties) and 6 of their kids (some of whom were designated drivers because the event was in a neighbouring city, about an hour away by car).

@knarly327 and I, didn’t know any of the others and I wasn’t too keen on the idea of being stuck at an outdoor concert, walking in crowds of people, in high heat and humidity. (The humidity usually does me in and zaps my energy on account of the MS, so we decided to drive ourselves.)

Once we got to the city and found a place to park, l thought that I would simply take a few photos, write a simple walk with me post and thank @bluelightbandit for his generosity in the process.

I had carefully medicated with cannabis infused olive oil, a fattie and some shatter before I left our house.

I use cannabis exclusively to stay in remission and technically have been high since 2007.

I also brought these things with me because I knew that we were going to be out for about 6 hours and I might need to re-medicate (discreetly) somewhere.

I asked @knarly327 to take the photo (above) so that I could include it in my post. As we started to walk in the direction of the performance, I took some additional photos of a beautiful water feature that we past along the way.

It was all quite elegant and very innocent as I planned the material for this post, in my mind.

As we made our way closer to where the band was playing, the crowd was growing in volume.

@knarly327 said “I can feel that your freak-beacon is on full strength, Bec. Just try to blend in and don’t make eye contact with anyone. I know you want to capture some video footage and I‘ll try to stay just behind you in the crowd.”

“Ok”, I say.

What @knarly327 was referring to is my uncanny ability to draw the freak element out in people who cross my path. He’s witnessed this more times than he can count.

(@bluelightbandit has a beacon too, he generally attracts people who want to fist fight with him. Thankful, most people just want to hug me and tell me the most bizarre things. I think this is because @bluelightbandit is over 6 feet tall, where as, I am tiny. I tend to attract people who just want to squish or pet me like I’m a toy.)

As I start to weave my way between people (in the crowd that is building) I do my best not to be intrusive and I make an effort to get as close to the stage as I feel comfortable with.

I was thinking about just trying to blend in as the band was starting to play.

The band is what’s known as a tribute band. They mimic a very famous Australian hard rock band (from the mid-70s) named AC/DC.

The thing about tribute bands is that they attempt to be just like the original performers that they are emulating right down to the way they physically look, move and sound. Typical, they only sing the songs that the band that they are trying to copy, has made famous.

The name of this particular tribute band is Who Made Who.

I took a few videos and uploaded them to my YouTube channel on July 12th, 2018.

I wanted you to be able to see what I see.

Notice the fellow who crept up closer to the stage to capture some video footage of his own?

He was part of our group and I had really only been introduced to him a few hours before.

We didn’t really know each other and I thought to myself: “Why don’t you just check your ability to project your own energy.” So, I thought, I’ll point my phone in the direction of this man and see just what his reaction is.

“Mmh”, I thought: “Under 10 seconds to get a little tongue action, not bad at all. Haha!”

(Twice I might add.)

I guess my freak flag was actually flying at full mast just like @knarly327 said it was.

The band played on.

I decided to give myself a little intermission and fired up my concentrate pen.

No sooner had I finished discretely vaping some shatter when things went all to hell in a handbag.

I had been crouching down all this time because I had chosen to wear white shorts and I didn’t want to sit directly on the asphalt.

Before I knew it, I had been carefully extracted from the safety of the crowd by a friendly giant.

“Where the hell is Rusty when you need him?”, I thought.

(This is a Canadian joke. That some will get, if they are old enough to remember.)

Then, a microphone was put in front of me.

“Oh Gawd!” I thought. “So much for blending into the crowd.” @knarly327’s warning about not making eye contact was ringing in my ears.

Oh well. Carpe Diem! Let’s get on with the show.

(I did have a second of paranoia and wondered if the guy knew I was stoned.)

“What?!?” You want me to yell that I want to get stoned? I’m high as fuck, already. There’s no wanting.”, I thought.

For a split second, I thought about whipping out the blunt that I brought with me and lighting it up in front of the crowd...but I didn’t. (Funny what goes through your mind.)

Then I thought, “What!?! You want to give me the shirt right off of your back, I can barely handle the one I just was given and you can’t have it. I’m not trading you.”

“Swear at me and kiss me all you want, but you can’t have my Bluelightbandit shirt.”

Haha!

This is how I ended up backstage after the concert was over.

First with the guitarists.

Then, with the lead vocalist.

And finally...in the arms of this man.

?

Yeah, passed around like a well enjoyed, saliva soaked, doobie...(It’s ok. I can say what you’re all thinking.)

I did end up with another shirt at the end of the day.

Hahaha!

A big thank you goes out to @bluelightbandit for the amazing gifts that he gave to me and to @knarly327 who has always had my back and took all the photos that I was in and the video.

I welcome your comments and I invite you to follow me on my journey...I have a fantastic shirt collection. ;)

~ Rebecca