An Old Person at a Young Person's Concert

An Old Person at a Young Person’s Concert

Ahhhh.   I'm sitting in a Starbucks in Montreal.  Heavy traffic to get here. Found a nearby parking space after depositing the girls on the sidewalk with all the other emos (they said it, not me) to wait in line for the show.     What luck. There is a Starbucks right at the place where the girls are waiting in line.  I have two hours, a credit card and a kindle.  What a wonderful way to pass a two hour wait til the doors open -  not til the show,  just to get in the doors.  In fact I can even sneak back here during the show if I so desire.  I have a seat in the coffee shop where I can look right out at the girls standing in the street sipping their chai tea lattes. But alas.  Even though when I come to Quebec I almost never hear the English language spoken, despite the large percentage of anglophones, I hear it next to me. It is very distracting. A young man and woman.  He must be talking about his break up.  "I just want to lie in bed with her all day, tangled in the bedsheets..."  No. It appears they are composing or practicing a play.  I look over and see highlighted packets. Must be scripts. Something about making love...bodies, naked... raw ... Flesh coming together...and...  I try and tune it out to read my book but it is impossible. Since I’m a Therapist, I'm reading a book about bullying, which is good, but not gripping enough to tune out the goings on next to me.  If I were reading 50 shades of gray, which is not any more gripping, I could just close my eyes and pretend I'm listening to the audiobook.  If they were only speaking French...


Okay.  Now she is saying "that was great! Now we can ('please say now we can go home, please...') take it from the top. I love your expression, keep going with that."   But they stop after a few sentences and are now going on and on about scars and poetry.  And something about stardust.  Now the other available seats are filling up.  Why do things always have to be bait and switch with me? Murphy’s law all the way.   Oh. OH.  They have their date books out for next week. Thank Goodness!   No.  They are taking it from the top again.   Only louder.  With even more expression about how he wants to be tangled in the bedsheets again. I know the play by heart now.  He keeps fucking up after "bed sheets" and has to start over. All this sex is making me begin to fantasize. About all the ways one could strangle a man in a coffee shop with a set of bedsheets.  I imagine myself as a character like Katniss Everdeen, running through the streets of Montreal, cops and bedsheets in tow... hot cops at that. And French. It takes a LOT of imagination, but it can be done.    Now there is some other entertainment.  A young woman with her laptop just sat down right next to them. I'm peering over my reading  glasses trying to read her expression. She would make a much better Katniss than I, but twenty years ago I could have kicked her ass  and everyone else's.   Plus I have more cleavage. Not necessarily better,  just more.  Her eyes are moving back and forth. How can she read with this going on?  The girl of the pair got up to get coffee. I read for a wonderful few minutes.  But then he begins to recite the lines alone.  Someone shoot me.

Now I'm in the concert hall to have an hour wait for the opening band. The two hour wait was worth it to the girls (not to me) apparently as they are near the stage. They do not have varicose veins and give no thought to the idea of standing for hours practically nestled up to next to goodness knows who. So much for stranger danger.  As an old person at a young persons concert, my first order of business is to scope out a place to sit.  And a beer.  I was going to wait a while to order my one beer but like Pavlov's dog, I don't know what else to do in a bar (sorry, venue) other than to order a beer.  My first goal actually was to lounge, beer-less and engrossed in my kindle  in the glorious balcony that beckoned  to me from above and that was clearly pointed out by my daughter.  It was closed.  Barred by a huge gate and padlock. I entertained briefly some hilarious scenes in my mind  if an almost 50-year old parent scaling the walls, trying to be Katniss Everdeen, or worse, Jane of the Jungle and landing effortlessly on the balcony.  I don't see a chandelier or I would be dangerously close to actually breaking the fantasy-reality barrier. I would hate for my kid to miss the concert or to have to hitchhike home afterwards and tell her dad to bail her mom out of a foreign jail in the morning.  Or the hospital. I digress from my search for a chair.  I spy a bench.  Is it a bench or merely a ledge?  I can't see from across the room but when I get closer it turns out to be the latter.  No worries.  It will do fine for my butt.  And my beer.  It is like finding a cup of water in the desert.  And it is mostly unused.  I hope the bouncer doesn't kick me off, or I'll have to resort to my Katniss impersonations again.  It appears that the girls room is near by as a stream of girls are parading by. If I get bored, which I already am, I can entertain myself by tripping people and then pretending it was an accident.  I wonder how many times I can get away with it. Probably once.  Or less. I see a woman who looks ten years my senior.  Will I be obliged to give up my perch on the ledge if it gets crowded in here?  I ask myself "what would Katniss do?"  Damn.  She would certainly not trip people on purpose, that's for sure. Neither would I.  But In my mind I can channel my inner mean girl who never had a chance to flourish all I want.

I've been here 20 minutes and I'm already experiencing muscle fatigue from perching.  If I cross my legs to get more comfortable I will trip someone and it will be an accident, which means I'll waste my one "free" chance at entertainment.  Pulling the fire alarm would just be totally inappropriate.  I realize that I can now most certainly go back to Starbucks, leaving the girls pressed up against goodness knows who but now I have the dilemma of losing my perch, as it is beginning to fill up.  Damn Again. Plus my butt is asleep and it is entirely possible that I am unable to walk. I wish I had downloaded a more interesting book.  I'd take book three of 50 shades right now if it were the last book on earth even though I vowed I'd never read it.  Oooooh. Lights out.  Cheers from a thousand girls.  Crap. I might have to un-perch to ask at  the bar if they have earplugs. At the last concert  I made  Alison wear them and now I'll have to fight through all those goodness knows who's to get them to her if they even have them.  I have enough to buy two more pairs. Gosh, what an oversight. Those girls are feet from the speakers.  There is a sea of bodies between me and them. Perhaps I can get the crowd to "mosh" me over there.  Perhaps I'm nuts.  

My butt has enough feeling left in it to feel every vibration of the music, despite the slight reprieve provided by the earplugs that I am most selfishly wearing at the back of the concert "venue" as the girls make a point of calling it.  Put another feather  in my “bad mother”  cap.  Oh. Fancy that.  The older lady has found a place next to me on our ledge.  I don't have to move after all.  I feel so cozy sitting next to what appears to be a kindred spirit.  I try to chat her up by pointing out that the bar has earplugs for two bucks, but she turns away from me, oblivious (or because of) my friendly overtones. Or because she doesn't hear me or is French.  Or all of the above.  Perhaps I won't trip her when she goes to the bathroom.  Maybe I'll offer to save her perch while she goes.  Although most old ladies pee all over the seat so if she does, maybe I'll...  Oh this is getting ridiculous.  

I'm going back to my kindle.  All I have on there are educational books about parenting and Mental Health or preteen books about dragons, and I'm afraid of dragons. Gosh how boring is that?  How boring am I? The most gripping thing I could find was Anna Karenina, which I have already read. Fortunately I am old and can  remember only that the book is about a girl - and the picture on the cover clued me in to that as it is.  The old lady has left me. Do I smell?    Oh. She's back. I feel like we are old friends, albeit silent ones.   Perhaps my next form of entertainment should be to sidle up to her (although I'm as close as I can get to her already) and put my arm around her, just to revel in her reaction.  I could try my hand at a duckface perhaps.  As I said, this is getting ridiculous.  As ridiculous as my sitting here for five hours and then getting lost on the way home like I always do.  I have been informed that we are in fact going to stand in the cold for as far into the night as we need to to get an autograph.  I am in trouble for not doing so on that rainy night last fall in Boston when I insisted on hitting the road at midnight so I could make it to work in the morning.  What a kill-joy, eh?

Score!  Take that feather out of my cap, I am a good and dedicated parent after all (depending on the age of whom you ask)!  During the break I purchased two pairs of plugs with the last of my cash and "excused me'd" my way through the crowd to deliver them.   My reward, other than a look of utter disdain, bordering on hatred, from my beloved offspring today will perhaps be a thank you years from now when my daughter is able to hear me yelling from the other room for her to bring me another Depens. She will not connect her ability to hear with my supreme sacrifice when she was sixteen, but I will remind her many times.

I left my perch to watch the band for a while.  I actually like the singer, although he is certainly no Neil young (I hope Neil never finds out that I was in Starbucks, since we are supposed to be boycotting it).  However, there is a mom in front of me, waving her arm in the air in the same manner as is her daughter and 95 percent of the audience, but she looks as if she is having a religious experience. She is not young, either. Younger than me, but not young by a long shot.   I'm all for being a cool mom within reason and identifying with the younger generation and all, but there is such a thing as over-doing it, lady (So says Miss I'm-Katniss-Everdeen-in-my-mind). This is what parenting is all about, isn't it?  Shameless put-downs of others to bolster our own shaky sense of security.  Right?  RIGHT? Incidentally,  the daughter waved her left hand for the entire duration of the concert.   Her mom gave up after five minutes.

My perch has been taken.  By a young hairy guy.  I'm next to him with my back against a picture frame. I sit in fear of knocking down a giant canvas. And I'm sorry but he smells.  I wonder if he has been scoping out my treasured spot near the wall. With no picture frame.  I am sure of it.  Katniss is tired.  Can't even drum up any visions of kicking his sorry ass.   As I said,   Ridiculous.  It is this or Anna K.  

Okay. I'm enjoying the show. I'm trying not to, but it certainly rivals Leo Tolstoy at this moment.  I bet even Katniss Everdeen would like it.  I actually really liked this guy’s other band before they broke up.  But I'm NOT going to wave my hands in the air, especially because some young punk who is half my age with a microphone tells me to.  Okay?

I am happy.  Blissful, in fact. Bordering on numb (at least my buttocks are).  Not to the point of religiously blissful, mind you, but blissful, nonetheless.  I am blissful because Alison is no doubt full of bliss at this moment. I am vicariously as happy as an aging mother can be, perched on a ledge trying desperately to hold up an enormous canvas so she doesn’t make a total fool of herself when it all comes crashing down and the bouncers totally come over and give me a rash of shit. The punk (who in reality is a nice guy) who is singing is my daughter’s favorite human being in the world besides her dad.  I'm probably third in line I am hoping, but ill take up to fourth if I have to.  This guy’s picture  is on my daughters wall and has been for years. There is a creepy likeness of him, in the form of an action figure (unopened) on her bookshelf.  She wears a picture of him on a t shirt. She loves him. He is singing a few feet away from her and other than the fact that he is robbing her of her hearing I really appreciate him for this.  And his band is quite nice.  Now he is giving advice for life.  A twenty five year old. Half my age (almost).  Giving advice.  But it is  good advice, in fact. "You gotta figure out what the fuck you want to do in life and go do it". Good advice.  I can't argue. I could give the same advice and be ridiculed til the cows come home. But I don't care.  It doesn't matter who gives it as long as it’s good.   Now this is getting seriously ridiculous.  No it's not.  He's telling the kids to go out and find somebody to talk to if they need to.  He's making a plug for Therapists. Awesome.  Keeping me in business and dispelling the stigma.  I wish I could ask this guy over for dinner.  Too bad he is already married and can't date my daughter.  And is way too old. For her. 

I am actually disappointed that there is no autograph line. I find out because I make the sacrifice to miss the last song in order to get in line outside the venue so we can be first and get on the road. The guys at the door tell me this is the last stop on the tour and the singer has to get home to his wife and daughter. But we get over it, we get more coffee and head home.