Friday nights are something that are always looked forward too. When you're little it's because that is the day that you get to stay up a whole half hour later and maybe Kelly will get to spend the night. It's the night your older sibling gets home from college for the weekend, and you are so excited to see them. It's the night during the summer when your parents take you to the drive in, and you watch a kids movie first, and then you turn the car around and your parents watch a movie, while you sleep in the cab of the truck.
Once you get into junior high, Friday night is when everyone in the sixth grade goes NightSky coffee house and then across the street to the rec (the coffee house and the rec were across the street from each other). At the rec you would hang out with your friends and see all the other cute boys while dancing to the cha cha slide.
But Friday nights were a whole different story in high school. The Friday night football games were what was looked forward to. All the people in the stands, the marching band playing the fight song and the student section going wild as the football team runs onto the field; nothing felt better. The energy at the games was amazing. You could feel the atmosphere change as we took a lead or as we would go down a touchdown. Then there were the basketball games, which were just as great as the football games. (maybe even better)
Then there is college, where almost any night of the week can be Friday. You stay up late anytime you want and if you want to go to the bars on a Monday, you do it. My time in college has given me a new appreciation for Fridays. It's the day I get to stay in my room all night as my roommate goes out (not that she is ever here anyways) and get all my work done, or at least tell people that I did all my homework. Some of the best Friday nights I've had while in college were spent in my room, or living room with my friends. I love that feeling of release as my last class ends and the weekend begins.
"...everyone in the sixth grade goes NightSky coffee house and then across the street to the rec (the coffee house and the rec were across the street from each other)"
ReplyDeleteThat parenthetical is so unnecessary.
If I were you, I would pair this little essay with one about the changing nature of Sundays, bookends of the weekend. I get the strangest feeling on Sunday afternoons, a most unsettling feeling. It was even worse before college. I think I want to write about that now. Thank you for the inspiration Kayla.
I truly relate to this essay. Though I agree with Tristan in reference to the parenthetical (plus it should be goes to* I think).
ReplyDeleteI feel the same about Fridays. They used to be exciting. Late night TV, high school football games... but it does change in college. My first 2 years here, everyday was Friday. I was always out. Now I look forward to Fridays to stay in and get things finished and ending it with wine and M*A*S*H. Though I do have the occasional Friday night out. I think Tristan's suggestion about Sunday is solid but it sounds like he's going to do it himself. What about Saturdays? I find those days have morphed too. From Saturday morning cartoons and playing outside to getting up by 8 a.m. so I can finish all of my reading for English.
It's actually really funny to me the structure of the sentence Tristan quoted, it reminds me of Perd Hapley, a TV anchor on Parks and Rec who has a roundabout way of stating common-sense tidbits of info. Sorry for being such a nerd, maybe Dave will corroborate my claim as an avid watcher of the show.
ReplyDeleteI would like for you to tell me why basketball might have been better than football. Not as chilly indoors? No helmets, so you get to see the faces, even the cute shooting guard who's in your one math class? Those details make the essay.
too is meant to precede an adjective, you wanted "to" in the first line,but it would sound better if you said "I've looked forward to Friday nights my entire life."
great detail in line 2 by name-dropping your friend Kelly. As usual, I beg you to make this more personal and give us all of the details!
Parentheticals aside, Kayla enters the sentence hall-of-fame with the following:
ReplyDelete"It's the night during the summer when your parents take you to the drive in, and you watch a kids movie first, and then you turn the car around and your parents watch a movie, while you sleep in the cab of the truck."
Honestly, I want the whole essay to be a slow-cooking of this memory. It's an idyllic one, and not one I share, actually. I only get a chance to live it through your description. So, what movie are we talking? What gets said on these nights? What's the weather--specifically. What are the feelings? What gets eaten. Is there cigarette smoke? Does thinking about these moments make you nostalgic, or bring up anything else about the relationships? How do you feel when you wake up after sleeping in the back of a pickup? Do you have lines on your side from the corrugated material? Did you kick your siblings and giggle? Did you actually watch the grown-up movie?
Check out this amazing evocation of a childhood summer night by the writer James Agee:
http://davidkirkpatrick.net/2012/06/30/james-agees-masterwork-knoxville-summer-of-1915-written-in-ninety-minutes/
Dave