So Chris and I walked up to the
Lakewood Amphitheater gates on Saturday night and I held out my purse to be
searched. The woman eyed my purse for a moment, and then waved the two of us in
without checking anything else. The boy in front of us had been asked to empty
his pockets a la TSA, and the girl behind us was shaking out her Hello Kitty
blanket to show that she had nothing stashed in it. Chris and I were all like,
“Huh?”
We had lawn “seats,” so we followed
the crowd up the stairs. The amphitheater was an actual hill covered in, like,
grass and ant mounds, if you can believe it. I checked our tickets to make sure
we were in the right place because I was sure that we must have accidentally
stumbled into a Roman gladiator arena instead of the concert venue for the Zac
Brown Band.
Chris took my elbow and carefully
helped me climb the hill. We decided to sit in the very back, so we could lean
our backs against the wall. We spread out our blanket and sat for several
minutes before I decided I had to use the restroom. So I was like, “I have to
go use the bathroom. Do you want me to get you anything while I’m up?”
Chris was like, “Sure. I’d like a
bottle of water.”
The line for the ladies’ restroom
snaked around the concession area. I swear I waited like 30 minutes to get in.
I was doing my thing when the girl in the next stall started barfing. I have
that sympathetic barf reflex thing, you know? So it was all I could do to keep
my dinner down long enough to flush and unlock the door. Unfortunately, the girl
hadn’t made it to the stall in time. There was upchuck all over the area by the
sinks. I’m like, “That’s so gross,” but I managed to hold my breath long enough
to wash my hands.
The water line and the beer line
were one and the same. It was long. I stood in it. Young people in various degrees of
intoxication bumped into me, splashed beer on my shirt, and burped in my face.
I finally made it to the front of the line and asked the woman for a bottle of
water and she was all like, “Really? Just water? You know I have to take the cap
off of that.”
I was like, “That’s fine,” but it
wasn’t really fine, because I spilled half of it on my shoes while I was
climbing back up the hill. I collapsed next to Chris and closed my eyes. He
gently waved the gnats away from my face.
It started to get dark, and that’s
when we noticed that the young couple sitting/lying next to us was, like, you
know? They were totally oblivious to everything but each other. Chris smiled at
me, and I thought he was fondly remembering when we had been like that, but
then he whispered in my ear, “Do you think he remembered to bring protection?
Maybe I should ask him.”
The Zac Brown Band started to sing
at 8:40PM. At 8:42, it started to rain. It hadn’t rained in Atlanta for 6 weeks,
and now it was raining. Hard.
The music was awesome. And when the
rain let up a bit, we could see the band almost as well as you can see them on
YouTube. I’m pretty sure Zac Brown was wearing his signature ski cap, anyway.
It was, like, cool.
Up on the hill, the angst grew to
fever pitch. The girl half of the couple slapped her boyfriend and he stomped
off. She promptly began wailing and, like, texting, and in no time, girls from
all over the amphitheater had flocked to her. We could hear her sobbing over
the music. Boys shuffled past, eyeing the girls in their short skirts and
cowboy boots squatting on the ground next to the heart-broken lover. It was,
like, an impressive sight, I’m sure.
At 10PM, I decided that I had to
stand up because I was feeling stiff. I grabbed Chris’s hand and managed to
half-stand. A few creaks and groans later, I could actually stand up straight.
We couldn’t help it; we started to laugh. Chris folded up our blanket and we
pushed our way through the throngs of drunken young people to the exit.
What did we learn from this
experience? First, neither of us uses the word “like” correctly – you know, instead
of “said.” Second, we think like parents when we see a young couple making out.
Third, we have already met our quota of angst for this lifetime, and we don’t care
to see more. Fourth, fifty-year-old bodies don’t like to sit on Georgia clay in
the cold rain for an extended period of time. And finally, despite the physical
discomfort we endured, neither of us would choose to be 18 again for anything.
We drove home, happily tapping our
wet toes to Zac Brown on the iPod. “Life is good today.”