Springapalooza

My freshman year of college, I met my best friend Liz.
We had all kinds of fun, from role playing to gain confidence in situations, to experiencing "Caf Panic" when we don't know where to sit at dinner, to making Facebook rules of what is NOT acceptable.
We also are obsessed with Pinterest, Taylor Swift, and sewing high-waisted, elastic skirts.

Liz's friend Ty works at Lenoir Rhyne University in Hickory, and he was working to set up a big festival called Springapalooza. Interested, we eagerly agreed to go.

We drove the hour drive down to Hickory with our friends Noah and Will. Noah, the Narcoleptic Runner, can fall asleep anywhere anytime. We hadn't driven five minutes out of the town of Montreat before he was snoozing (To be fair, before he actually fell asleep, he managed to break off the ceiling handle that older people use to pull themselves out of the car. He HAD to be tired from exerting all the energy). Meanwhile, Will told us a story about how his car hasn't worked right since he hit a dog.

In Hickory, we pulled up to this one red light intersection and there was a full car beside us that was listening to rap music. From the moment we pulled up, they were staring at us. Noah, now awake, smiled and waved. They responded by never breaking their glare at us, even once. We eventually all looked forward uncomfortably, glancing over ever so often at the car, and saw that they were all five still staring. "Man, this red light is taking forever," said Will, voicing all of our concerns. We nodded in agreement.
Finally, the red light changed, and we drove away, glancing backwards as our friends turned and gave us the middle finger.


Arriving at Springapalooza, we spend far too long deciding if we should bring in sweatshirts or not. Deciding against it, we walk inside, sit down, and have fun. There were great speakers, great stories, and great people.

Then, the time comes for some live music.

The band starts playing, and they are great. We become total fan girls and geek out. One of the highlights of the concert itself was the band playing a song that everyone in the crowd knew. Pumping everyone up by TONS of crowd participation, repetition, and running/jumping around the stage, this was clearly quite the crowd pleaser. Somewhat bewildered, I look at Liz, Will, and Noah and they all return my look. Clearly, the four of us have never heard the song before. We had fun, but we were literally the ONLY people in the whole room who never heard this song. And I mean, they knew EVERY WORD. We were a little confused, but went along with it.

At one point during the song, Ty runs over to us and yells something along the lines of "ISN'T THIS AWESOME!?!?" and sings along. We all nod eagerly.

Noah suggests "Maybe they all came last year and bought the cd!" (This was the second year it was produced, and they used the same band). We aren't totally convinced, but we go along with it and enjoy the rest of the night.



We later learned that the song was "(I'm Gonna Be) 500 Miles," by the Proclaimers.

I can honestly say that I have never heard that song before in my life, and now I hear it on a regular basis, forever reminded of the day that I was successfully cultured.