P is for Parrothead

P is for Parrothead.

I once was a Jimmy Buffet fan, like my brother.  JB fans are called Parrotheads, a take off on Dead Heads, the Grateful Dead fans of yesteryear.

Jimmy sings songs like Margaritaville and Cheeseburger in Paradise, among many others made famous by his laid back beach bum happy go lucky style.

My brother once took me with him to Washington D.C., for a Jimmy concert.  His wife and her mother also went.  I'd never been east before.   We stayed four days and we visited the White House.   I got pulled out of line because I kept buzzing security metal detectors.  My brother was so embarrassed.

Turns out I had quite a few buttons from the White House and the Hard Rock Cafe I'd taken to give friends back home and one had traveled on through the hole in my pocket, lodging down my leg and its metal was shrieking the security screen alarms.  I shrugged it off, when the guard asked, "Do you really need so many buttons?"

Inside, a little girl was asking a secret service agent about Socks, the Clintons' cat.  He fired off at her, "Socks, Socks.  That's all I hear about."  My brother intervened and said, "Hey, she's just a little kid interested in the cat."  The agent turned on my brother then.

"Where are you folks from?"

My brother replies, "We're from Oregon."

"Oreegone?" the agent deliberately mispronounces our state's name.  "Around here, we don't even recognize that as a state."  He stomped off.

"Somebody needs a chill pill," I offered, to his back.

It was a tremendously awesome trip!  The concert was fabulous!   I had so much fun.  As you can see, from this old and damaged photo.  That's me, passed out in the hay, white shark behind me, pirate flag raised in the back..."fins to the left, fins to the right"....ever the parrothead!

P is for Me, the Parrothead!