Regardless, he tried to catch me up on the IC happenings (most of which I already knew about thanks to my obsession with checking the two blogs daily). I mentioned the international event in April and how it was recently entitled The Rescue, hoping to pull more information out of him. While he didn't have anything else to tell me, he did seem surprised that I already knew what the name of the event was, considering he'd only just found out about it himself.
In early February the IC staff got to see the rough cut of The Rescue documentary. Lauren Bazan felt compelled to inform Shawn and me that it would blow our minds but that she wouldn't say anything more. Needless to say, I was itching with anticipation, and I still had a full two months almost before I would get to see any part of it.
Not long after, I received a message from Lauren telling me that a guy named Dan Parris would be friending me soon. He would be in charge of planning the event with me. Little did I know, that would fall through somewhat later on. I love Dan to death, but this turned out to be my event alone in the end...
That same day she sent out a link to the Official Facebook page for the Saint Louis Rescue event. She sent it to me, Cassie Herrington, John Gallagher, and Mike Drackert asking if we would attend. In hindsight, this is quite funny. Cassie was one of the people who helped me plan the event. John was one of my best volunteers. And Mike didn't attend any event because he was too busy.
This is nostalgia, my friends. It's hard to believe how much I've grown from these early beginnings of The Rescue up until now. Perhaps others can't see it as well as I can; but I can feel the differences within me. It's an incredible feeling.
To continue, March 17th was fast approaching--the dreaded date of the screening, which had transpired from a GO screening to a Rescue screening, now that the new documentary was finished, released, and touring the country. I didn't hear from Andre again until March 16th, and only then because I put "hoping to hear from Middle America" in my Facebook status. Pathetic. Note to self: Roadies don't use their team phones.
In the weeks before the screening, I was running off flyers, hanging up official posters, sending out Facebook invites, updating my status multiple times a day, just so that more people would see it in their news feeds, emailing professors asking for extra credit opportunities, and personally inviting as many people as I could to The Rescue screening. Andre had officially offered me the two worst dates possible for a screening if he wanted any kind of decent turnout.
Monday the 16th or Tuesday the 17th? of MARCH? Mondays are chapter nights for almost every greek society on campus. Mizzou has a huge Greek Life. Although the administration likes to draw attention to the fact that it's only 25% of the student body, it always feels much, much larger. Probably because only the Greek students ever get involved in anything outside their schoolwork and their party life. As a non-Greek myself, I resent the stereotype, but am starkly aware of it.
Mizzou's reputation as a party school pervades the mind of everyone who attends, who once attended, who visited for a night or two, or who lives in the midwestern United States. Ergo, March 17. Saint Patrick's Day. One of the biggest party nights of the year. I was terrified no one would show up to the screening. Luckily for me, I got four journalism professors to offer extra credit to those students who attended the screening and wrote a reflective paper that included quotes from the speakers. The poor roadies were probably inundated with questions, but I can't imagine that was necessarily a bad thing. I had to give out my own contact information multiple times as people mistook me for a roadie as well. Something I'm not exactly disappointed by.
Back to March 16th. Andre called me wanting to know what was up/why I wanted to talk to him. Well, since I hadn't heard from him since February, I figured verifying the details for the night would be important. I had talked to Ana Hagedorn from Stephens College a few days before asking where she intended to take the roadies to dinner or for entertainment while she was housing them, since the Stephens screening was March 16. She didn't know she was supposed to house them, feed them, or entertain them. In truth, there's no obligation. Personally, I couldn't understand how you wouldn't even offer that. They're traveling speakers, living out of a van...certainly they don't have the means to house and entertain themselves every night without going completely broke.
Andre and I just checked in about the screening the next night at Mizzou and I asked him if he had housing for the night (Lauren had messaged me saying the roadies might need housing the weekend before, but obviously I hadn't heard from Andre, so I suppose they found somewhere to stay the night). He assured me they had a place to stay and they were really excited about The Rescue screening the next night and he'd call me later.
Sure enough, a few hours later Andre called me to say that they did not in fact have a place to stay and could they stay with me? Good thing I'd already informed my roommate that the roadies would probably be staying in our room at least two nights. Annie and I had also decided that the girls could stay in her room (since she's in an all-girls dorm) while I took the boys. That changed later when Brittany, Annie's roommate, informed Annie that she was uncomfortable with the idea of two complete strangers staying in her room even though she had been fine with the idea in the weeks leading up to the screening. Whatever.
After a little swich-up, Brandon and Andre would be staying with Annie and her boyfriend Brett in Brett's room (in an all-boys dorm), while Tessa and Heather would stay with me and my roommate Taylor in mine.
I finished my classes that Monday night at 8:15pm and so I went back to my dorm to try and get some last-minute homework done and studying in before going to meet the roadies and their Stephens contact Jen in downtown Columbia. I went to wait outside Chipotle, and not 10 minutes later I spied an I Heart the LRA t-shirt walking towards me and five people talking and joking. After recognizing Andre (in the LRA shirt) and Heather's red hair I broke into a smile and went to say hello.
We were all introduced (also my first time meeting Jen) and chose Which Wich for a late night dinner, since the roadies hadn't eaten yet. We had a glorious conversation that included Brandon's retelling of the van breakdown in Yuma. I wish Brandon would tell me stories every night. He's fabulous! After some roadie talk, which was mostly me trying to see what I would need as a roadie in the way of money, how the driving is, etc., we figured out housing for the night, so I gave them my address. They drove Jen back to Stephens and I walked home to tell Taylor that they were here and on their way up. She had been at her chapter meeting since before I'd left for class at 5:30. I was so excited!
Then I thought about it...what do I do with four roadies at 10:30 at night? Turns out they were tired and we pretty much all showered and went to bed.
The next morning I could be seen waking up at 7:00 as usual (even though my first class isn't until 9:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays). I was trying to get ahead on my work for that night so I could literally leave class at 4:45pm, go to the screening, and spend the rest of the night with the roadies. Good thing I did, too. Heather and Tessa left around 9am to go to meet the boys and go to breakfast. I left soon after to go to my first two classes after which I met up with all four again and took them all to the dining hall for lunch--I don't eat there anyway, so I might as well use up my meal plan on people who will appreciate it. I promise we have fantastic dorm food. Brandon even said it "exceeded expectations."
After lunch I brought them up to the office where I handed them off to Brandon Schatsiek for a while. The five of them would be promoting the screening that night while I sat bored out of my mind in the office catching up on previous work and getting ahead some more.
I left early to go to my 3:30 class in time to meet the roadies in Speaker's Circle handing out flyers and blaring music from the van. Perfection! I proudly announced to Tessa, Brandon and Heather that I had acquired a copy of the Emperor's New Groove and we would be watching it that night! Favorite Disney movie of all time? I think so! Well it's tied with Mulan and Hercules, but regardless, it's fantastic.
Then it was off to class for me. No clue what Brandon S had the roadies do the rest of the time, but I met up with them again afterwards at my dorm. Andre took a shower in my bathroom while Brandon, Heather, Tessa and I went to Coldstone's to kill time. Here we met up with Brandon Schatsiek and talked about all sorts of things, but mostly just got in the way of other people who wanted to take advantage of Coldstone's Tuesday deal of buy-one-get-one-free with a student ID (which I of course utilized). Andre called after a while and was waiting for us in the lobby of my dorm because the 6 boxes of merchandise had arrived. Finally! They had been running low since the first week of tour. We drove back, loaded the van and both Brandons, Andre, Heather, Tessa and I rode over to the Geological Sciences building, taking the scenic route with the impressive postcard view of the columns backgrounded by Jesse Hall. If you ever see a picture of Mizzou, this is what you see.
We began the setup of the screening--stealing tables from classrooms, calling people last minute trying to get them to come and bring friends, having the comes come to say the van needs to be moved, the usual. At this point I began to get nervous again. We had one hour until the screening started. Nervous for the screening? Not at all! I was incredibly excited to see the new film! We'd figured out the entire electrical system already and the merch table was just about set up. Several people had volunteered to put the TRI pamphlets under the seats. Becca Hoffman had come to bring me my daily dose of caffeine. Everything was running smoothly. I was nervous about attendance--same as the last screening.
In the fall we had over 350 people come to our GO screening. I can still remember sitting down at the bottom of the auditorium just waiting since the roadies and Mike had everything well in hand. With five to ten minutes to go, I braved a turn in my seat just to see the fifty people or so who actually came and was completely blown away as I saw nearly every seat in the auditorium was filled! My heart leapt with joy to see that, and it's still a magical moment that I'll treasure for years to come. Unfortunately, this semester I didn't anticipate as many people coming. About 100 had responded "yes" on Facebook. I guessed 50-60 would actually show up, which would be embarassing at the very least. Much to my surprise, yet again, about 200 people did come to the screening, including Mike Drackert. It's rare to see the man, but he's greatly missed in the IC group--by those of us who were there at the beginning to remember him. Poor guy's so busy.
All four roadies presented wonderfully. I can't say how merch sales went, because I don't have numbers or anything to compare them to even if I did have them, but there were lines for quite a while following the screening.
And so went my screening. Afterwards, the roadies, Brandon S, Amanda Morgan, Emily Becker, Katie Prince, Spencer Pearson, and I all went to the notorious Columbia pizzeria: Shakespeare's. A campus favorite and visitor-frequented landmark. Dinner was on me that night (I can't bring myself to let the roadies pay for things while I'm acting as their host). We returned to my dorm later to crack down on the dozens of tshirts we'd just received.
While simultaneously watching The Emperor's New Groove, we rolled, sorted, and counted all 6 boxes worth of tshirts and restocked the merch. Annie showed up not long after 11 to take the boys back to Brett's dorm for the night. Amanda and Brandon left soon after. Heather had already gone to bed, and around 1am Tessa and I followed.
The next morning, I left for my 8am class while the girls slept in. I struggled through that class, the hour break, and my 10am class because all I wanted was to see the four of them one last time before they hit the road. At 11 I called Andre to find out what they were doing. Surprise! They were staying for lunch and wouldn't leave until 2. They didn't realize Kirksville, MO was only an hour and a half away, and that they didn't need to be there until 6 anyway. So we met a bit before noon back outside the dining hall so I could swipe them in.
We had a slight runin with a psychotic kid dressed all in black with greasy black hair. I'd been watching him for a while as I waited for the roadies to come over and he'd gone into the dining hall and come out with a fork saying in a really high-pitched voice, "someone's going to get hurt today, but you didn't see anything!" and then he ran off cackling. Bizarre. He was either mentally messed up or still high on something. After the roadies came over, Heather announced that a crazy kid had rushed their van screaming/laughing. Yep, same one. Ah, memories.
Lunch was wonderful and long. Emily, Katie, and Spencer showed up halfway through so they, too, could say goodbye. By now it was 1:00 and I was officially skipping my 1:00 class. As we left the dining hall around 1:20, we walked back to the van and I realized I couldn't say goodbye. So I didn't. They were all going to drive to Barnes & Noble to buy copies of Blue Like Jazz, so I went with them. Ironically while there, my friend Margaret from Truman called to find out what I was doing. "Hanging out with the roadies" was my reply. Why do I get such a kick out of saying that?
Andre went across the street to the bank to try and fix his debit card which had split in half. Sadly, he couldn't get it fixed, so we all drove back to campus to drop me off. It was hot outside for no apparent reason. Heather pulled out her jumprope (her portable gym) and Brandon and Tessa talked about inter-team relationships among the roadies. Not that any existed, simply about what would happen if they did and how awkward it would be to actually follow protocol. Andre was being Andre in the background. Gotta love him. We finally said our goodbyes...and my heart began to break for the first time of what would be many times in the near future, unbeknownst to me. My family had left me. Worst of all, I still had homework to do.
I miss that. I miss being able to spend every waking hour surrounded by Invisible Children people (with the exception of class, but you can bet I was sitting around on my laptop most of the time planning The Rescue:STL during those classes anyway). I miss Brandon's storytelling and Tessa taking pictures with my Stitch doll and Andre talking about the chalk drawings in the amphitheater outside my dorm and Heather just being adorable. I miss the energy of always being somewhere with a mission to bring more people along for the ride. I miss that daredevil spirit of "Hey no one's using this, let's make something of it. Hope it's not illegal. Oh it is? Well we'll put it back when we're done." I miss them complaining for a few seconds when the phone rang and Trigg was on the line...for the third time that day. I miss the van--that glorious wreck of a van--that felt much more like home than my dorm ever did.
And so began my Rescue experiences in Spring 2009.
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