Sweet Dreams are Made of This.

Edie, AK, and Marett

Yesterday, Cameron was wearing my little blue bracelet from Fred's Team that says "Imagine a World Without Cancer". He's just learning to read and when he's feeling lazy, he often asks me to read something for him. When I told him what the bracelet said, he said it over and over and over, like he sensed the gravity of the phrase, like he needed to commit it to memory.

I received the bracelet as a little hostess gift from AK, who's running the Boston Marathon on April 19th for Fred's Team in honor of 6 year-old Marett Cole. AK had the genius idea to have a karaoke party not only to get together and thank some of her donors, but also in her words "to watch others leak their dignity for a good cause."

And leak we did.

After a beautiful speech filled with gratitude and heart, AK kicked off the night's proceedings with the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams are Made of This", while Marett and her little sister Edie walked through the crowd with buckets, sweetly soliciting funds.

Marett and Edie followed suit with a rousing rendition of "Boom Boom Pow", and then accompanied Katie and me with some serious air guitar on Joan Jett's "I Love Rock n Roll."

These two young stars left soon thereafter, and others began to trickle up on stage, taking a turn at classic hits such as "Here I Go Again", "Total Eclipse of the Heart", "Bad Leroy Brown", and "Margaritaville." Yours truly may have pulled in a few bucks when she stormed the stage with "Baby Got Back." Twice. I'm just happy that some of my less marketable skills (shamelessness, ample booty-shaking) have finally been put to good use.

AK was also called back on stage to perform "Sweet Dreams are Made of This" again, and the more I think about it, the more this song was such an appropriate start to an evening dedicated to raising money to fight cancer. Because that's our dream, after all, to imagine a world without cancer, and to do whatever we can to turn that dream into a reality.

All told, it was a raucous evening that raised over $1800 for Fred's Team, and every penny of that money goes specifically towards neuroblastoma research, per AK's request. You can read more about Marett and about AK's fundraising journey here, and of course you can make a donation too.

You don't even have to sing a song, and from the looks of things, everybody's doing it. Even the cool kids want to imagine a world without cancer.