We're All Friends Here

Last Friday night, we went out with our friends Amy and James to celebrate Amy's birthday. It was a perfect night to head to the Rattlesnake Inn in Florence, Texas. The weather was almost fall like, the beer was cold and one of our favorite Texas singer/songwriters, Max Stalling was performing. What a GREAT way to celebrate our friend being born.

Max played all of the favorites. We had a great time watching the college sorts be loud and stupid. We enjoyed watching the older couples dance and hold hands.

At the end of the show, we kinda of waited around. James had bought a couple of CDs and he wanted to get them signed. Max is a friend to James and his brother Thomas. They have even had Max out to play at our annual camping trip.

James was waiting in line behind a super cute and fun dancing couple that Amy and I had commented on earlier in the night. They were there with a large party. It almost seemed like it was some sort of family reunion. Well, naturally as the super cute dancing couple got to the front of the line, all of their people started joining them. Amy and I laughed as we watched the group grow larger. And then there was the picture taking. And the autograph signing. And then more introductions. And and now cousin Jill is here, so we should take one more picture.

The whole time, James is just standing there. I continued to make comments to Amy about it. I was growing more and more frustrated by the fact that those people had no regard for James and the fact that he (and all of the folks behind him) had been waiting in line too. All the while though, James doesn't seem to mind at all. This went on for a while (seemed like hours) and finally, James is up! Woo hoo.

So James is talking to Max and then he calls for Amy to come up and say hi too. So I get in line behind the last people. I am thinking since it is Amy's birthday, we should take a Max picture to go with the other 4 or 5 that we have. James is saying to Max 'you remember my wife Amy?' yes yes. And then somehow it comes up that we want to take a picture. Jeff gets the camera. They tell to me come on up. I say 'no no - we'll wait. I'm behind these people.' Those people say 'no, go on ahead' and then I say something assy like 'I watched all of those other people cut and I don't wanna be like them - we are good to wait.'

At that very moment I kinda felt like everyone was looking at me.

And then Max says, 'Come on up, let's take this picture. It's okay. We are all friends here.'

I've kinda been carrying that with me all week long.
What a great way to look at things.
Even though I am still kinda bugged by the whole disregard for the people behind you thing, he is so right.

We are all friends here.

Thanks Max for helping me to keep it all in perspective.

And if you are still with me here, then I think you should take a second to watch Max sing a coupla new songs that I really love.