Stick it to the man! Wobbly tables, With or Without You, and Birthday Parties

So if you were in the same class as I was in this Thursday, you heard the story of all stories. The tale of all tales. The epic of all epics. Professor Middleton's fake engagement adventure. I was blown away by how gutsy she was to pull such a huge prank on her family and friends. It made me want to prank people, have adventures, and be spontaneous because, (1) #YOLO, and (2), stories don't tell themselves. In life, we have to make the stories.

I took that feeling to heart last night when my band played a show for a kid's birthday party. On the way there I was tired, in a funk, and just wasn't very excited for it. When we got there, there was no stage, no sound equipment, and no lights. We were going to have to play on the ground with our own stuff, in a poorly lit warehouse. Boring. Part of me just wanted to just accept it because it was the easiest, laziest path, but then I remembered Valene's story, and I said to the group, "Let's make a stage out of these wobbly tables." That started a beautiful chain reaction.

We moved a few tables, clamped them together, swept some metal shards away, found some extension cords, and made this ghetto little stage. It swayed a little in the wind, but we thought, "This is rock n' roll! We don't need support from 'the man'! In fact, we don't need any support at all!" So we went for it. The drums moved it around a little bit, we were afraid of our equipment being destroyed, but we did it anyway. Well, there was so much energy coming from all of us from our commitment to defiance of the man that we played our best. Our lead singer drew in the crowd and interacted with them in the perfect ways.

Probably the pinnacle moment was when our singer had Mitch, the birthday boy, come to the front of the crowd while we were playing "With or Without You" by the great U2. Our singer had all the girls line up and individually tell him how they felt about him. Each girl had great things to say and a couple even gave him a little kiss (bow chicka wow-wow!) We then had him come up to the stage and sing the  last chorus of the song. He was awesome. It was the birthday gift he'd been wanting.

This spontaneous action came from the excitement that we had built up throughout the night, which came from the decision I made to have a good time and make this experience a good story. I think we all need to remember that what we do now makes up who we are. If we want to be a fun storytelling person, we have to be fun and MAKE stories, because stories don't just happen.

-Coleman

PS here's the footage of the experience itself:

http://youtu.be/eRxDQ8U1LKc