The Summer of 2005

Kansas summers were always brutal, but the fierce heat on that afternoon in the summer of 2005: I’ll feel that for an eternity. My best friends and I locked arms on the now infamous day in June and walked blissfully into a backwoods amphitheater for our first and only Warped Tour as a trio. Mindy and Julie were Juniors in high school; I was still an innocent sophomore, led by the bad influence of my two best friends, or so everyone thought. As the summer drug on, it appeared that I might have been the bad influence after all. As reserved as I was in my everyday life, I turned into a monster when I had those two by my side. We raised hell in our Podunk town that summer, but we didn’t do it alone: we did it in style, with a summer anthem behind us.

The 2000s thrust me into puberty, into middle school, then eventually in 2003, into high school. Somewhere in these formative years, I can't recall when, I developed an angst; a fire. I teetered between a shy, reserved straight-A student and a spray paint-wielding vandal with the mouth of a sailor until I met the two best friends of my life- then the scales tipped.

Warped Tour 2005’s lineup, the anthem of our now decades-long summer featured Fall Out Boy, Motion City Soundtrack, Cartel, and Avenged Sevenfold. Panic! At The Disco made an appearance on the drive to the venue. We could (and still can) quote the album forward and backward without skipping a beat. We received our neon green wristbands before locking elbows to sashay into the concert of our lifetimes like Dorothy, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion down the yellow brick road. Me being Dorothy, of course (I think we all knew it, even then).

Motion City Soundtrack was featured on stage one, already mid-set, because we were never on time for anything. "Everything is Alright," blared over the loudspeakers. If you know, you know. That song is every millennial teenager's teary-eyed anthem (Rivaled only by My Chemical Romance’s “I’m Not Okay”). We exchanged glances for a split second and immediately ran hand in hand into the sea of emotional teens. In my short sixteen years of life, I had never experienced dehydration from dancing and bouncing around a crowd for hours. It was pure, unfiltered bliss that will be stained in my temporal lobe until I die.

After dancing for what seemed like years, we made it to the next stage. We were soaked in sweat, battered and bruised, but on a never declining high. This very moment is still in my head; it has been since experiencing it. In the back of another sea of sweaty teens and twenty-somethings, we stood paralyzed, adrenaline rushing through our veins, in awe of a sound that we hadn't heard before. The Spill Canvas was playing on stage in front of the crowd, and it's as if we were frozen in time. A song called “Polygraph, Right Now!” was being crammed into the hollow space between our ears, and it was nothing short of mesmerizing. We were dead silent and still through the set, and the three copies of the album One Fell Swoop that we purchased after the set were played on repeat until each of the plastic disks wore down to dust.

We didn’t let Warped Tour end when we walked out of the venue, a collective three shoes between us. The car ride home was an encore, and that evening as the sun sunk beneath the horizon, we sat on the back deck at my parent’s house overlooking our poorly constructed pool. Still dehydrated and overheated and being the bad influence of our trio, I dared my best friends to jump into the pool without so much as thinking. My more flawed judgment took over, and I set the example, jumping from what must've been ten or fifteen feet above the water's surface. I took the first dive into the ice-cold water. Each took their turn after I proved it wasn't the world's worst idea. We outswam the sun's light until the moon was dead overhead.

The sets we stood and listened to and the ones we danced to until we collapsed all formed our summer's anthem. Those moments we shared that summer and the next won’t leave my mind, even if I tried, even if I wanted them to.

A cage opened, and my inner demons were released in the summer of 2005. That summer's anthem melded different genres: Pop-Punk, Emo, Indie Rock, and Alternative. It couldn’t be named; only felt. We walked into Warped Tour 2005 on June 22nd and walked out with an unbreakable bond and an unforgettable anthem for the next sixteen years and counting.