It's Official - I'm OLD!

I had a rude awakening last night.

I found out that I was OLD!

It all started because I saw this young, ahem, cute, singer on "Saturday Night Live", back in October. His name is Bruno Mars.



I saw his pure, raw, talent and want to learn more about him so I GOOGLED him, found that he had a website and clicked the link. I watched a few more videos of this young, Elvis-looking singer, with his smooth voice, and saw the link that said "Tour Dates" and thought, "Hmmm..." and clicked.

You know where this is going, right?

Low and behold, Bruno Mars was coming to Scottsdale, AZ, a mere hop, skip and jump away from where we stay in Mesa for the winter. My finger posed over the "buy tickets" button for a few seconds.

Should I or shouldn't I?

I called Jim over to the computer and told him about this band I wanted to see and asked if he wanted to go. His reply? "I don't care."

That's all I need to to hear!

Bang! I quickly bought two tickets in a blink of an eye.

As the date for the concert drew nearer, I did a little research on the Martini Ranch, the place where the concert was being held. This is what I found out.

Standing room only. Uh-oh.

There were some minimal seats available, come early. (THIS WAS A LIE!)

Doors open at 7:00 pm, concert starts at 8:00 pm.

NO FOOD IS SERVED.

We decided to leave a little after 5:00 pm because we weren't familiar with the area, and with our large truck, parking is always questionable. Our thought was to find parking, then hopefully find a restaurant within walking distance of the concert building.

It was 5:40 when we drove past the Martini Ranch, and THERE WAS ALREADY A LINE! Say what?

I knew we were in trouble.

The good news is, there was public parking a couple blocks down that still had open spaces so we were able to park Big Blue with no problem.

There happened to be two restaurants across the street that we could grab something to eat. Do we chance it and watch the line grow even longer?

Or do we stand in line with our stomachs growling with the off chance we get a seat?

We opted to stand in line.

At 5:45 pm.

For a concert that's supposed to start at 8:00 pm.

That we will probably be standing for the whole time.

Am I sounding old yet?

I wore shoes with one inch heels. Are you laughing? Yeah, you read that right. ONE INCH HEELS. And my back could hardly take it. I actually stuffed some flat sandals in my small purse so I could switch shoes if need be.

I needed to.

Within 10 minutes of waiting in line.

I cajoled the people in line around me saying, "Okay, here's the game plan. All you young people rush to the stage, and leave the chairs for us old people!"

They started letting the people in around 6:15. The two bouncers were checking everyone's ID. Jim didn't even bother taking his out. I hopefully foolishly took mine out.

The guy was kind enough not to fall over laughing when he saw me holding out my driver's license. He said, "That's okay. I trust you."

Did I hear him snort, or was that my imagination?

Then he attached a wrist band to each of us and told us to go in. The young woman scanned our tickets and suddenly we were in the place.

And...it was so small.

We stood there a minute trying to figure it out. A long bar, running almost the length of the room was just about filled with patrons. The room wasn't too wide. To our left were four steps leading up to another small room with four booths, with reserved signs on them, and room for standing, then four steps down to a larger room with a stage.

This is where we stood, because there were no seats to be found.

Lovely.

I looked at my watch.

It was 6:30 pm.

Jim's face was a thundercloud. That's all he needed was a black shirt that said, "Security", and he'd a made a perfect BOUNCER.

He stood behind me with his arms crossed and leaned on a post.

Finally at about 7 pm a DJ came out a played some music to get the crowd going. While it's true that I'd never heard the music before, I enjoyed it and tried to ignore the pain shooting up my back and down my shoulders from  holding my purse.

Then a Rapper came out. I don't know what his name was; I asked the two young guys standing next to me. They had no idea who this guy was either.

I'm not a fan of rap but he wasn't bad.

I kept glancing back at Jim. At this point I thought I saw steam coming out of his ears, but I could be wrong.

The crowd kept getting thicker as the hour got nearer to when Bruno was coming on stage. Two young ladies had somehow finagled themselves in front of the two guys I had spoken to and were soon encroaching into my territory, which I had staked out SINCE 6:30!!

I turned to the guys and said, "Who's bright idea was it to let these girls in front of you? It may be good for you," I said, wiggling my eyebrows, "but bad for me!"

They both pointed at each other and laughed. Then the one guy said, "What do you mean?!" He was shorter than me and stood up on his tiptoes to try and see over the one tall blond.

The Rapper finished his set. I was trying not to feel claustrophobic in the crowd. I was afraid to look back at Jim, but I thought I'd better face the music, so to speak.

"How are you doing?" I asked sweetly.

Jim said, "I'm listening to one song, and if I don't like him, I'm waiting in the truck!"

Oookay. Not a happy camper, are we?

Granted. The music was loud (but not too loud), it was crowded (but not too crowded) and my back was killing me. But, dammit I paid for the ticket, I'm going to at least stay for the concert!

Of course, the concert didn't start on time. Does any one EVER start on time?

At 8:15 the band came out and the crowd went crazy.

They played a loud, fast song, and it did Jim in.

"I'm waiting in the truck!" He yelled in my ear.

Me? I stayed for just about the whole concert. It was great. And yeah, I was probably the oldest one in the crowd, but it didn't matter at that moment because we were all there for the same reason. Because we were awed by this singer's talent, and I'm sure, many of the girls were swooning by some of his dance moves. (I know I was!)

After the concert, Jim and I walked to a nearby Japanese restaurant. While waiting to be seated, a young group of people came in.

I sat there with my tired old body, my aching back, shoulders and feet and looked at what must truly be the "In Crowd". The girls were young and beautiful. And they had bodies to die for. They had flat stomachs, tiny waists, nice boobs, long hair, low necklines and high hemlines, and 3-4 inch heels of the latest fashion.

And that's when it hit me.

Who was I trying to kid?

I am freakin' old.

Okay, so I went to a concert of a 25-year-old singer. Whip-dee-do-dah. I had to take four, count 'em, FOUR ibuprofen just to make sure I could get out of bed this morning.

My feet are still hurting me.

I still feel like I was rode hard and put away wet.

The problem is, when I come down to Mesa for the winter, we stay in a 55 + community. I am the youngest in our group. Well, I was till Lenore started hanging with us. (She's a year younger than me.) So I started feeling full of myself, a little whippersnapper.

Then I ventured out of our community.

Hah! A rude awakening indeed!

A side note: While sitting in the restaurant, I noticed that we still had our wrist bands on from the concert. We needed scissors to cut them off. Jim had his pocket knife with him and he offered to slice the band. I said, "No, I'm wearing this as a badge of honor." Later I heard a guy at the next table say to his group as they were leaving something about "That couple.....awesome" and I just KNEW it had something to do with our concert wrist bands!

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