Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Labor Day 2000

You know those days you remember forever? Of course, you remember significant days like your wedding day or graduation day, but I'm talking about those seemingly average days that somehow lock in your memory never to be forgotten. That's how Labor Day 2000 is for me.

We were living in Conroe, TX (near Houston) and decided to drive to Katy Mills mall that day. Our friend owned a magic shop there. We would go see him and hang out at the mall. The only problem was that it was about an hour drive from our house. Our car at the time was a car that we had bought for under $1,000 and had been previously used in the art car parade. This is what it looked like when we bought it:PhotobucketWe had taken the balls off, but now the silicone that was sticking the balls to the car remained making it look like a polka-dotted furry mess. We definitely got some looks as we drove that thing to the mall!

However, that was not our biggest problem. The biggest problem was that the car did not have air conditioning. Labor Day 2000 was a record breaking high there in Houston (record breaking high in Houston is really bad). It was 110 degrees! You add humidity to that and I cannot even describe what it felt like...maybe an oven. It felt like an oven inside our Celebrity, furry mess of a car. We had the windows rolled down, but it kept bringing hot air in. It was like we had the heat on in 110 degree weather. So, we rolled the windows up. It was not much better, but the air was too hot to let it blow through the car. You would think that some air was better than nothing, but this air was miserable!

I'm beginning to sweat just thinking about it. When we got to the mall, we were drenched in sweat. It was before lunch when we got there, but we vowed to not get back into that car until after sundown. We stayed at that mall all day until it closed. We were just soaking up the air conditioning!

Finally, we got back into our hideous car. It was dark out, so our car didn't attract as much attention. We rolled down the windows and began the drive home. I remember the air flowing through the car seemed so cool. It was not that cold, but compared to earlier, it was chilly! I was just enjoying the "cool" air and thinking about how funny it was when we entered the mall dripping with sweat. Then, one of our favorite songs, "Sweet Child of Mine" came on the radio. Brock and I looked at each other and smiled. I turned the radio up full blast and we sang out as loud as we could! At that moment, the air felt cool, we had a good song on the radio, and we were happy. Good times.

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