Wednesday, June 16, 2010

“Man, you got to breathe!”

In the summer of 1980, the summer that we had 70 days in a row of 100+ degree heat, the summer that saw bugs fry in midair, the summer people ran out to their cars in the morning to start the A/C then ran back in the house waiting for the car to cool down, my girlfriend left me. Rita took the Washer and Drier with her to live in Atlanta
She left me with a car payment, a book of T.S. Elliot poems and the set of weights I got her for Christmas..
I was heartbroke, and it was hot as hell, and the only thing I had to get me through was a copy of the Air Supply album “Lost in Love”. This album contained 3 of the Top five hits going at one point that summer, and you could not turn your radio on for five minutes without hearing the title cut “Lost in Love”, or ‘Every Woman in the World” or ‘All Out of Love”.
And I couldn’t hear any one of those songs without bursting into tears.
So my boss takes me to try to cheer me up and to help with that he invites 4 gorgeous women.
But every where we go, one of those damn Air Supply songs is playing and I had to bite my lip to keep from losin’ it in front of all these gorgeous women.
I took to taking deep breaths and holding it till I turned purple to help keep my emotions in check.
And that’s what finally gave me away, when ‘All Out of love” started playing and I took a big breath and started biting my lip and began to "gulp" as my body began to starve for Oxygen. One of the girls looked at me and said “Man, you got to breathe!” I exhaled and fell into a lump in the middle of the table, bawling uncontrollably.
The next day, I took that album to the dumpster.
I stopped holding my breath for Rita to come home long ago, but I still hold my breath for Air Supply and that’s why I hate them.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's a good reason to hate them. That said, there are no bad reasons to hate them. That's the great thing about Air Supply. You don't need a reason to hate them. They're like a tick you find on your person--you don't need to justify brushing it off and setting it on fire.

UF Mike

Circa Bellum said...

great story. Oddly, we were talking about the heat wave of '80 at lunch today. We had 45 straight days over 100 in Little Rock. Luckily it was the first year I had air conditioning at home. My truck didn't, but I was able to live with that...

jaye said...

I graduated from high school in 1980 and lived in Dallas. I couldn't get out of my office building to the parking lot without just collapsing from the heat. The air in the building was so cold and the heat so extreme that I hurt. I had pulled some back muscles helping in the yard and got to work the next day and couldn't put my arms above my head to slip telephone messages in the old time switchboard at which I was working.

It was awful.

And so was the job.

I went on the college and never looked back.

bulletholes said...

No bad reasons to hate them....thats encouraging! Hey Mike!
Hey Bellum! It was a tough year that one.
Jaye, you werent working at the Hyatt were you?

Kim said...

It's ironic though that they are named AIR supply and they made you hold your breath...