"Launch Me Bro!"

Every rock concert I've been to, inevitably, a small white girl, or a small white guy, will ask me to "launch" them. For those who are unaware what "launching" is, it's how one begins to crowd surf. You find a strapping young man, and you ask him to physically throw you above his head onto the surging crowd. Now as a person who has a bit of a sadistic streak, I will not refuse a small white guy's request to be "launched". Four hundred years of oppression and racism demands that I throw him. I generally pick a spot that has one or two people in it, and then after yelling "fore", I launch the hapless fool straight at that spot. There've been times when I have actually felt/heard the sound that the "launchee" made as they came in contact with the ground, and I have to say, it is a brand of satisfying that can only be experienced, not told. In the case of the small white girl, I don't do this. Because I'm pretty sure throwing small white girls into the air is what got Rodney King beaten up the second time.

I say all of this to make a specific point: every so often, you meet someone who has that look in their eyes. You can tell that they are about to ask you to launch them. For years (and in some cases, all of their lives) they have dreamed about this moment, and they are so close they can taste the glory and splendor that is their goal. They WANT it, and dare I say, they even CRAVE it. That hunger can be seen in their eyes. And all you can do, really, is, well, launch them. Throw them out into that void and wait and see what happens. Sometimes, the crowd rushes underneath them, and then holds them up to the sky, and for that brief two or three minutes before security pulls them down and then throws them out of the concert, they get to live like rockstars. Of course, other times, they plummet to the earth in a painful and ironic commentary on what it really means to be alive.

I used to think that it was just a lot of crazy white kids looking for thrills because their own lives weren't exciting enough, but after some real thought, I've realized that all of us want to be "launched". We want to have the courage to "throw" ourselves after our dreams. We may fail, and even if we attain our goals, they may be short-lived moments of glory. But don't you want to be able to say that you leaped? That you boldly went forth where few others have gone? Really isn't having the courage to leap a success in itself? I think so. So...launch me bro!