Memories #6

Mac DeMarco - Salad Days

About twenty years ago, I used to be a complete idiot. Okay, well, maybe not completely but I definitely didn't have appreciation for my life. Whenever I consumed alcohol, I often did idiotic things. So, this one time, during a fourth of July party at a friend's house, I suddenly had an incredible urge to jump from the roof of the five story apartment complex into the pool, which was probably only about six feet deep, at the most. Like I said, totally moronic. I was pretty drunk, obviously, and I managed to get a different friend of mine to go up there with me. Now, this wasn't the first time that I jumped off roofs into pools. This was the type of thing that I enjoyed doing but I had never attempted something so high before. I did jump off another friend's roof from about three stories up and that was pretty scary. Anyway, we ended up on the roof of this apartment building and I began to gauge whether or not I could make the leap. My friend told me that if I did it, then he would have to follow me down. It was kind of a dare. Across the way, we could see another set of apartments where a party was in full swing on the penthouse. People began to chant for us to jump, just the encouragement we needed, right? Well, at just as I was preparing for my approach, my friend suddenly had a revelation. He tells me, "Wade, this is the crap that we read about in the paper. You know? Some idiot tries to jump from the roof of an apartment complex into a pool and ends up dead." I looked at him and totally saw the wisdom in what he was telling me. We went back down to the party and proceeded to get even more drunk. I don't really remember anything beyond that moment of truth but to this day, I have never jumped off a roof into a pool again. I must say that it was one of those moments when I began to appreciate my life a little more. The same goes for the moment that I began to listen to Salad Days by Mac DeMarco.