I got in line at about 3 p.m. and waited for three and a half hours before they started letting people into the venue. The line stands up. I help the couple in front of me with their stuff because the guy left to go to the bathroom and wasn’t back yet.
I had my backpack and book, and his chair and half the cooler. We get up to the middle of the line. The guy comes back and takes the cooler and the chair. We come to a pause in the forward movement of the line.
My ticket is gone.
There’s nothing I can do about it. It just isn’t in my hand or in my book any more.
I figure that it probably fell out of my book when we handed off the cooler. So I back up the line, like a salmon upstream, asking people if they had seen a ticket on the ground. It was a pity party, especially since they all know how long they had been standing there and I was clearly in line in front of them.
No one had seen a ticket on the ground. I got to the place where we had made the cooler exchange, and it wasn’t there. Sad, but I had no backup plan at this point. Do I stay and try to buy another ticket even though I only have $12 in my pocket? Do I hang out and enjoy the concert from outside the gate? Do I go back to SLCC and help with the paper?
All of these ideas and a thousand more flashed through my mind when a roar went up from the crowd. My ticket had been found at the front of the line. Somehow, the guy that I had been helping ended up with it in his hand.
Seeing David Byrne and St. Vincent and the band is like going to Disneyland. The concert was awesome. There is just something about him that screams creativity.