Purple Rain

In the 9th grade, my then best friend Angela got me tickets to the Purple Rain concert for my birthday. My parents decided that, although they knew I loved Prince more than life itself, he was too risque for a 14 year old to see live. I was devastated, heart broken, crushed. I thought I would never recover from the pain.

To this day I remember the anguish that I felt when Angela and Andrea (who she took to the concert instead of me) brought me a t-shirt the day after the show. I recently told my mother that she stunted my growth, ruined my life and that the decision she made to keep me away from Prince was the worst thing that has ever happened to me in my whole life.

Her response: If that's the worst thing that's ever happened to you then you've had a pretty good life. Lesson Learned.

Submitted by: Nicole

"Patches"

When I was kid I used to play so hard on the playground that I constantly wore holes into the knees of all my pants. My mom got so tired of it that she started sewing industrial strength knee patches on my pants. The problem was, she never used patches that matched my pants! Gray patches on black pants. Brown patches on green pants. I walked around all day looking like a baseball catcher. It got so bad that kids at school started calling me "patches". But I didn't care, I kept right on playing.

Lesson learned: No price is too great as long as you're doing what you love.