Janis Joplin, Swimming Pools, and Changing Our Luck

                It seems like several lifetimes ago that I spent a year in College Station, TX. My reasons for being there, and the misadventures that followed are probably worth a post of their own sometime. But for now, all you need to know is that my life long struggle with insomnia was at an all time high, only surpassed by the following year, when I lived in Los Angeles.  But again, that is for another post. The point is, I was awake at 3 a.m. when my sister Kris showed up at my door one night. It didn't phase me that she lived 100 miles away in Austin  and she just randomly showed up in the wee hours of the morning. We were in our early 20's. Gas was cheap. She had a flexible job. It also didn't phase me, when she announced her reason for being there, in the form of a question.
               "Do you want to go see why Janis Joplin hated her hometown so much?" She asked.
                "Sure." I shrugged.
               After a discussion about which car to take, which probably went something like "Mine does okay on the highway but it doesn't really turn left.."  and "Mine doesn't always start but it does great once it does." (our Dad was a mechanic. You know what they say about Cobbler's Kids, or something..... I always get my cliche's mixed up....) We decided to take my car, and we hit the road, destination: Port Arthur, TX.
                Port Arthur isn't exactly the kind of town with a lot of places that are open at 6 a.m. , which is when we arrived. As we soon found out, it isn't the kind of town with a lot of places that are open, period. We passed the time waiting  for the town to wake up at an elementary school playground, lying on the merry go round and wondering out loud about Janis Joplin. Did she go to school here? Was this merry-go-round here back then? Did she like merry-go-rounds? Then we drove around, looking at the houses and buildings. By the time businesses opened, we both agreed that it was just a very sad town. I am guessing that it was a little more of a thriving town when Janis Joplin was alive, but who knows. We walked around and looked at shuttered buildings for about a half hour before we decided to get out of town. Poor Janis. We were both on the verge of a deep sadness for Janis and her fellow Port Arthurians (Port Arthurites? Port Arthuratorians? Ooh, Port Arthurities?!), so we bought Cat Stevens' Greatest Hits at a truck stop outside of town to cheer us up, and decided to head toward the beach. But then we passed a sign for Beaumont.
              We had been to Beaumont as kids. We had some really good memories of our trip to Beaumont. But we also had a shared memory of an incident at a hotel swimming pool, where everything we knew kind of shifted and was the beginning of a big change in our lives in the next few years after that trip. We fell into a conversation about how it was sad that one incident like that could overshadow all of the other really fun things that happened on that trip. I don't remember who suggested that we find that hotel. Maybe we came to that idea together. I do remember that we drove straight to said hotel. We had no problem finding it.
                 This particular hotel swimming pool was awesome. It was awesome when we were kids, and it was still awesome as we stared into it as adults. It was fairly big, with an "island" in the middle.. It was February. It was a little chilly out, so it was pretty much empty. I don't remember if we discussed it first, or if it just happened. But the next thing you know, Kris and I both jumped into the pool, fully clothed, and started swimming toward the island. We touched the island, then returned to the "shore", got out of the pool and left. It felt amazing. I was giddy. So was Kris. Neither of us could stop smiling. "We just changed our luck!" I said. It wasn't what I was trying to say. I am sure there is a better term for what we did. But it sounded good at the time, and that term stuck. We went across the street and walked through the drive thru at Jack In the Box . We went on to Galveston, driving in our heavy, wet clothes, singing along with Cat Stevens. Our clothes may have been heavy, but we felt lighter. It was such a good feeling. A feeling we agreed should be felt more often.
             Since then, both Kris and I have Changed Our Luck all over the country. We did the Chicken Dance in a Grandy's Parking lot in Denton TX. We played kickball at a gas station in New Florence, MO. I did cartwheels down a parking garage ramp in Santa Monica, and I did the worst Fouette Turns known to man on a street in Venice, CA. (I had to call my sister Denise on that last one and she described how to do them over the phone to me, so I may have been doing something completely different, but that isn't the point). This Changing Our Luck business is fun.
              I don't know if this works for everyone. I haven't really suggested it to others, or even talked about it that much..... but next time you pass by the coffee shop where you and your ex had the fight that eventually led to your breakup, go in and have an impromptu dance party, so that the next time you pass by it will be the coffee shop where you started the dance party. Instead of avoiding the street corner where you had a car accident, go there and draw a lovely chalk drawing that makes you happy. I hope it works for other people as well as it has worked for me. Try it, and get back to me, please.