Feel Like a Kid Again!!

When a grown man tilts his head to the side to get a good lick at his ice cream cone an angel gets its wings.

There’s a line down the block when I get to Webster Hall, one full of boys who look like the ones I went to high school with, all grown up, of men that look like their dads did. Doors haven’t opened yet, they won’t for another hour, but there’s plenty for me to do in the meantime. I’ll watch Zyn containers change hands, listen to the guy behind me in a baseball cap that says “Cowboy Hat” tell his friend about the time he’d seen Robert Earl Keen play at Red Rocks, how he hopes he’ll play “Gringo Honeymoon” tonight. A girl my age is working her way up and down the string of Matts and Tuckers with a stack of pamphlets enumerating the best things about Jesus Christ, would they like one? They say no thanks, they’re good. I do too.

I’ve never seen Robert Earl Keen at Red Rocks but I’ve seen him a half dozen times besides. Once I had a license I’d buy the $40 tickets whenever he had a show at the Jefferson, a venue on our downtown mall with a slanted hardwood floor, the same place we had our senior prom. To me his twangy nasal is the sound of growing up. As transportive as the whirring grind of my mom making pesto in the food processor. The squeak of every drawer in the antique chest in the living room. My dad’s truck pulling into the driveway.

Robert Earl Keen lived on the family computer, his voice always lilting from our dusty plastic speakers. Harry would sit at the monitor most days in the summertime, playing Addicting Games and burning CDs, stuffing the desk drawer full of freezie-pop wrappers. I had a Robert Earl Keen song about chewing tobacco on a mix I made myself, one my mom and I would listen to on the drive home from soccer practice, nestled between a Jordan Pruitt single and “Bop to the Top” from High School Musical.

After a highly thorough pat down at the door and a $25 hard iced tea from concessions I’m not close to being the first person in the venue, the floor’s already teeming with plaid flannels and cargo shorts. But there is a spot on the barricade right in front of the microphone, one the men are all to bashful to claim as their own. Matts’ loss is my gain. I will never be too cool to have the best time.

Two 18-year-old boys stand to my right, one short and curly, one long and straight. Their voices go high when they talk about the girls they’re flirting with, speaking largely in fish-based metaphors. “All you did was make out?! That’s like catching a bass and throwing it back.” They’re both wearing watches they got for their Bar Mitzvahs. They compare their respective merits with shrill determination. I watch the man to my left send a DM that says “Instagram messages are no longer end to end encrypted, FYI,” and then check every view of his Ring camera.

The last time I’d seen Robert Earl Keen play was at Webster Hall two summers before, on his farewell tour. He got sober since then, and realized at 70 he had enough energy to come say goodbye again. When the lights go down and he comes out, the sight of him takes my breath away. He’s skinnier than I’ve ever seen him, swimming in his white linen pants and matching duster, a 10-gallon hat. I’m close enough to see every hair in his beard, one he keeps shorn tight to his cheeks, concave now.

He tells us he’ll play all the hits, he’ll play all the songs he knows we want to hear. All the songs I’ve known by heart since elementary school. “The Road Goes on Forever” and “Corpus Christi Bay.” The one about chewing tobacco and “Gringo Honeymoon,” just like cowboy hat had hoped. He does “Feeling Good Again,” the second song I made my neck-bearded guitar instructor Zach teach me to play (after “I’m Yours,” obviously). He smiles right at me and I feel a big lump in my throat rising during the last chorus.

In his voice I can hear the house I grew up in, the thump of my mom’s clogs on the stairs, my dad’s table saw. When he takes a bow at the end of the show my eyes well up with tears, knowing it’s the last time I’ll see him.

There’s an ice cream shop by Josh’s parents’ house in Windsor Terrace. One with picnic tables out front, where you can get a banana split and you know it because there’s a big banana split painted just to the right of the register. One with a window manned by high school students and a big sign arching over top that reads “Feel Like a Kid Again!!”

We go on a Friday night after eating homemade pizzas for dinner. It’s a short walk on sidewalks warped by tree roots, getting late enough for the lightning bugs to start flickering on and off. Three women with grey hair stand in line behind us, all giggling despite the fact that butter pecan is sold out. We each get kids scoops because they’re a dollar cheaper and finish them by the time we get back home, ready to go downstairs to watch a movie in the finished basement, one with central air and a shag carpet. I take the corner seat of the sectional, my legs draping over the top edge of the couch.

The older I grow the more nights like this I try to string together. New ways to go back in time, little visits to being little — to a Robert Earl Keen Concert, to a scoop of ice cream. I think it’s funny when we say we don’t feel our age, don’t feel 28, 45, 70. How can anyone know what that should feel like, or who’s right when they say they do?

But everyone knows how it feels to feel like a kid.

I feel like a kid again when I rub Coppertone Sport under the edges of my swimsuit for the first time this summer, just like I did at twelve. It feels like a water-warped deck of Uno and soggy chicken fingers for lunch, the sting of a goggle strap pulling at my hair, Like hanging onto my mom’s slick one-pieced body, my dad’s hairy shoulders or, god help me, the arms of a teen heartthrob swim coach.

I feel like a kid again on the Fourth of July, watching fireworks with my mouth wide open. Watching the man in front of me leave and come back with a soft-serve ice cream cone to split with his wife. “I got us rainbow jimmies,” he say. He takes the first bite, tongue out, head tilted to the side so the sprinkles don’t fall off.

I feel like a kid again again that same night, at Sunny’s Bar, the dance floor full of people two-stepping or something close while the Bluegrass band plays a John Prine song. I feel sure when I look at their faces, blushing and smiling and bobbing side to side that, I can picture just what they looked like when they were little.

I don’t know if I feel 28. I don’t know what that should feel like. But I know how it felt to be little. To put pleasure first, in all its impracticality. To feel full and taken care of. Not too cool to have a good time. I will not see Robert Earl Keen play “Feeling Good Again” again, but I will listen to it and eat ice cream and in those moments I’ll live forever.

Pony Recommends:

1. My friend Ruby's Recs has never led me astray and Bad Marie was absolutely no exception. I devoured in two days, one at the beach and another in the park, and I relished every second of it. As a lifelong narc it is such sweet relief to read a book about a woman who keeps doing the wrong thing and knows it and wouldn’t have it any other way.

2. Isabel and I spent five hours of hottest day of the year at Brighton Beach in total bliss and that would not have been possible without this umbrella. If you don’t have fun at the beach and you’re not going to the beach with a beach umbrella then you are the problem. I live at the beach now and this umbrella is my home.

3. I laughed so hard watching Maddie’s Secret there were moments I was worried they’d kick me out of the theater. It is a satire on food influencer culture in the cloying tone of a Lifetime movie with niche references to Fly By Jing chili oil that are made just for me and you. Go watch it and then read Elissa Suh’s interview with John on moviepudding. Especially love the line “Butterfingers are so genius.”

4. SUDESTADA curated the contemporary art show for the summer of soccer. The Greenpoint gallery is filled with handmade pieces referencing aspects of futbol culture, from a hand-crocheted goal net and hand-stitched leather soccer balls to a line of silk organza clothing customized with little plastic Diego Maradona figurines traditionally used as cake toppers in the artist’s native Argentina. They’re hosting workshops throughout the exhibit’s run. and if you’re free on July 8th you should let artist Lusia Mantelli teach you how to make her chic-ass cross-stitch brooches. Tickets here!

That’s all! Xx Pony