Transient Transplant

I was having a bad day at work.  The kind of day where all I wanted to do was go home and curl up in bed and never show my face there again.  I had decided I was moving away from this God forsaken city when all it seemed capable of doing was rejecting me.  In case you haven’t realized, I have a flair for the dramatic.

My coworker was having a much worse day than I was, when she remembered that she had tickets to a Gwen Stefani concert that was that night.  She said she wasn’t in the mood for a concert and asked if I wanted the tickets.

I decided that postponing the plans I had to eat a pint of ice cream, drink a bottle of wine and wallow in self pity would have to be put on hold.

My 4th grade self screamed with excitement, as I vividly remember going out to purchase No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom when it came out.  I wanted to wear overalls and a bra like she did, though I was in no shape to do such, nor would that be acceptable in elementary school.  She was the epitome of cool to me.

She would wear outrageous things that no one else would pull off and gave zero shits about what people thought.  I idolized her then, and somehow she has managed not to age a day.  Nostalgia trumped any rational thoughts I had, so I texted the friend I knew was most likely to drop everything on a Wednesday night to go to a concert.

I rushed home, called my mom like a deranged psychopath, told her how bad my day was but that it was going to be ok because I got tickets to see Gwen Stefani that night and was leaving in 15 minutes.  I told her about my day and started crying, then cursing and telling her that I couldn’t talk about it any more because I didn’t have time to fix my make up before the concert so we had to finish the conversation later.

I met my friend and we grabbed our 204th row tickets.  There was an understanding that we didn’t know much of her solo stuff, and if we weren’t feeling the concert we would just bail.  After all, we both wanted to be in bed before midnight.

We showed our tickets and the guy at the door told us to go to section 104 for ticket upgrades.

I was impressed that we managed to jump 100 rows.  Things seemed to be moving in my favor.

We got in the line for new tickets, and the woman handing them out looked at us and said, “I have two in row 111, and I have two in row 13.”

“Are there chairs in row 13?” I asked, as clearly I’m too old to be standing for an entire concert.

She smiled and said yes, and we couldn’t believe our luck as we strolled down to the floor seats, only 13 rows away from the stage.

I sat next to a man in his 60’s who sat with his arms crossed.  I looked for a daughter to be with him, but it looked like he and his wife were there to check out the show solo.  Eve came out as the opener, people stood up, and he did not budge from his seat, arms firmly in place.

As Gwen came out, the energy was palpable, and I couldn’t believe that she seems like she’s never aged a day in 20 years.  While I’ve never been a fan of Botox, I decided I’m a convert if it means I look that good when I’m 46.

The guy next to me stood up, but still had his arms folded the whole time.  Eventually he grew tired and sat back down.  I wondered why he was even there.

Then Gwen started playing a No Doubt song, and he stood up and started whistling and cheering.  I could not stop laughing.  Apparently this man was there for the exact same reason I was.  We both loved the nostalgia of the No Doubt songs that brought us back to our roots.

All in all the concert was great, and exactly what I needed on a rough Wednesday.  At the very least, it was a fantastic distraction to remind myself that there’s things other than work.  I get so involved in my job and spend so much time working that I tend to need a reminder sometimes that it isn’t actually all I’ve got going on.  Sometimes I’ve got floor tickets to see Gwen Stefani and relive my childhood.  And that’s got to be a priority as well.