In high school, I was in a band with my friend, Todd Verdin. We were a trio and our first real gig was at a local music festival in the lot of a Waffle House in upstate South Carolina. “Wafflepalooza” featured nine local bands, performing in order of terribleness to tolerableness beginning at noon.

We went on promptly at noon.

Until booking this gig, we called ourselves “Sterile Darryl and the Syphilis Reaction.” We thought it was a funny name. The owner of the Waffle House did not think it was a funny name and insisted that we change it.

“My customers don’t want to see or hear those words while they eat our food,” he told us.

Todd’s father suggested we change our name to “Sterile Darryl and the Eunuchs.” We didn’t know what that meant, but “eunuch” sounded nearly as funny as “syphilis,” so we went with it. I don’t believe the owner of the Waffle House knew what it meant, either, because he went with it as well. And so it was. The band we created in a 90/10 effort to get chicks/play-music was named “Sterile Darryl and the Eunuchs.”

Eventually, we discovered what it meant to be a eunuch and we argued incessantly about which one of us of was “Sterile Darryl” and which were the “Eunuchs.” Being sterile was bad, but not as bad as being a man castrated early enough in life to “have major hormonal consequences.”

At Wafflepalooza, I dropped my pick just prior to the guitar solo in our first song. I motioned to Todd, our drummer, and Joe, our bass player, to keep playing while I retrieved another pick. Clearly, I got my rock band gestures mixed up because, instead of continuing to play, they stopped altogether. Slowly. Painfully. And with judgmental looks on their faces.

I’d like to believe that we got better after that first song, but my parents have a vhs tape of our performance. I saw it a few years ago. The quality of the recording is poor, but not so poor that you could mistake the steady stream of people leaving the lot for anything other than a steady stream of people leaving the lot. We were the first band to play and we were driving the crowd away.

I’ve yet to sit through the entire performance, but what I saw proved my memories to be true. In spite of the awful sounds and scenario we created, we had an extraordinarily good time.

Our chords were wrong, our timing was off, our vocals were shrill and dissonant, but we smiled and danced through each song. I like to think our friendship served as a shield from the pain we should’ve felt at that moment and that’s what kept us from throwing down our instruments and running away crying that day or any of the other countless ones that came and went over the years.

It’s late, though, and I know that I may just be getting sentimental.