Last night, this forty year old survived a One Direction concert. Surviving being the operative word, people.
My middle daughter is mere weeks away from her tenth birthday – double digits. Huge deal in kid kingdom, my friends. So, months ago, when I heard that tickets for One Direction were on sale, I offered to get them for her as a birthday present, to which she replied a resounding ‘Yes’!
‘Ok’, I thought. ‘No, big deal. I’ve gone to lots of concerts and love to lose my hearing for a few hours after getting the chance to dance while jamming to live artists.’ I’d taken my oldest to see Toby Mac just 18 months before, so I settled that I could handle One Direction, right? I figured it would be an awesome first concert for ‘my middle’ and we’d gain some girl-bonding time.
The day was beautiful, Phili inviting, and there were other cars boasting that they were headed to the same concert as we drove past, and we were able to obnoxiously honk/scream/communicate with them on our way in. It was like one, gigantic, night long party.
Until the screaming.
The screaming.
Dear God, the screaming.
This is my almost ten year old reacting to the mass hysteria of noise that was made during the opening act – not even the beautiful British boys, themselves. My ear drums shook with each piercing scream from the surrounding pubescent girls and by 7:05 I was already wondering how I was ever going to survive the night. Lawd. When did kids get such strong lungs and how had I missed the ability to create such sound vibrations with my vocal chords? It was practically savage, I tell you.
Let’s ignore the fact that we had chosen the ‘cheap seats‘, hanging out nicely in the nose-bleed section, that I could literally count the rows from the top of the football stadium down to where we sat, and that my daughter was frequently scared that we were going to ‘fall’ down to the bottom. This place was cray, people. But the screaming was just. so. loud.
Finally the opening act ended and it was time to get the show on the road… an hour later. After unending quantities of commercials, movie trailers and music videos. (Since when do they show those at concerts?) Oh, yeah. I’d forgotten about that part. It always takes an hour to reset the stage, right? Right.
Just around nine p.m., the fireworks began and Harry, Niall, Liam, Louis and Zayn took the stage, bringing the decibel level even higher than I thought humanly possible, and making every tween/teen heart burst with chaotic frenzy.
And I had fun. I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t been convinced this was going to be anywhere near enjoyable, after I’d seen just how very far away we were from the stage and had heard the noise level of the stadium. But somewhere between seeing their adorable British baby-faces on those big screens, watching them jump/dance/jiggle around on stage, and listening to those completely incomprehensible accents of theirs, I really enjoyed watching this concert.
It was fun.
The screaming didn’t even bother me so much anymore. I stood, took pictures, danced and even sang along (a little.) As they sang ‘Story of my life’, ‘What makes you beautiful’, ‘You & I’ and finally finished the concert with ‘Best song ever’, I forgot I was forty and started to have a good time. (I even lasted longer than my daughter, standing and dancing! Thank you, Body Pump for the stamina!) I laughed at their jokes, yelled after each song, marveled at the production and felt like a kid again.
Score. Maybe this was just what I’d needed all along.
I survived the night, made my ‘middle’ the happiest kid in the universe and proved that I could still hang with the big dogs 😉 We’ll see how I do the next time One Direction rolls into town…
Until then,
Happy reading, friends!