My best friend and I really, really like the movie Swing Kids.

Don't laugh.

If you've never seen it, it's a movie based in Germany during the rise of Nazism. It centers around a group of kids obsessed with the American Swing movement. With Swing Kids seen as a threat to the Nazi thought process, two characters are eventually forced into joining the HJ, the Nazi Youth organization. The two boys think it's the best cover - an HJ by day and a Swing Kid at night.

Right. Okay. The background part is over.

My friend and I were laughing about this. We feel similarly concerning our day and night lives, too. We're not running from Nazis or anything like that, but we do feel like our day lives and our night lives are vastly different from one another.

Take this past Thursday. I put on my pressed pants, my nice button-up shirt, my sensible heels, and I went to work. I work for a publishing company, editing articles, contacting authors. I work 8 am - 5 pm, have company benefits, an hour lunch break. It's a real job. And my friend? She works downtown at the Statehouse with the same dress code as above and the same hours. Yes, we work hard during the day, meeting our deadlines, calling our contacts.

Thursday was no different. We got up at 6 am, did our jobs, ate our little brown bagged lunches, and left at 5 pm.

But then Thursday night came. My friend and I are members of the Peggy Sues, and we were invited to open for Those Young Lions and Action Strass at Spin (the former Patio) that night.

So 5 pm came. We rushed home to kick off those sensible heels, rip off the office attire, and throw on the skinny jeans and the sneakers and the tee shirts we're more comfortable in. We ran to the liquor store to buy beer, met the bands in Broad Ripple, and played our set at 10 o'clock. We were home that night by 2 am.

Sensible, working people by day. Peggy Sues at night. Double lifestyle, like whoa.

And perhaps this is a poor comparison, with the mention of Nazi Youth by day and my office life by day - that's certainly not what I mean to imply. I like my job, I do, but I am not satisfied with going home at the end of the work day, eating dinner, watching TV, and going to bed only to get up and do it all over again the next day. Many people do it, and many people are happy doing it, but my night life, while I get no health benefits, no salary, no nice little hour lunch break, is just more fulfilling. Our set may have completely sucked that Thursday night, but that's not what I care most about (well, all right, I care a little bit about that, sure). I was having fun, making crazy memories with my friends, with the Peggy Sues, just enjoying the night.

So am I glorifying being out in Broad Ripple during the week till 2 a.m. when you have to be at work by 8? Well - if it makes you happy and you can still get your work done, then yes, of course I am. I certainly don't do it every night, but the nights that I can, I do. When I think back on my life right now, I probably won't remember which articles I proof read or what authors I had to contact.

But I will remember the night my band opened at Spin.