**WARNING: This entry is not unlike a ten year old boy…immature, goofy, and full of inappropriate comments. Consider yourself warned. Now, read on because I know you want to after that intro.**
Last week my friend Heather and I met up for Thai food and a sold out, weeknight concert. Now that I’m a mom, it always seems like a decadent treat to get to go out on a weeknight and stay up way past my normal bedtime. And, yes…I pay for it when I am running on 5 hours of sleep the next day, but it’s still completely worth it.
We drove downtown, procured parking across the street from the Ogden theater in what I like to call the “old people lot” (because it’s close and expensive and the young kids never park there), giddily showed our IDs at the door, and went inside to get some drinks. We’d lingered too long at dinner, and the place was already packed. With vodka drinks in hand, we walked around for a while trying to determine the best place to insinuate ourselves to see The Decemberists play.
We finally settled at the back of the theater on the raised platform near the bar. Seemed like a logical location for us. When the concert started, the band asked us to introduce ourselves to the people around us. In my 27 years of regular concert attendance, that request was a first. Still, we obliged and met our “neighbors.” The guy standing directly in front of us was named Chase (we renamed him “Chaz”). The guy standing to the left of me was John.
There’s an odd thing about concerts, something I’ve always kind of enjoyed. When you look around, you see tons of people relishing the same music that you do, but despite your similar taste in music (at least in this one band) you might never socialize with them if you met them outside the concert. There is often an interesting mix of people, not all of whom look exactly like you. It makes for great people watching, and it serves as a good reminder that despite our differences we can usually find something in common with someone if we try hard enough.
Well, as the concert progressed, Heather and I noticed that someone nearby must have enjoyed a hearty meal of Mexican food before showing up to the concert. Yes. That’s right. There was a gaseous odor seeping from someone near us. Was it John? Was it Chaz? We couldn’t be sure. Whoever it was, though, certainly was in some fair amount of intestinal distress.
Must admit that Heather and I were acting a bit childishly (I blame it on the vodka). We giggled, made obnoxious remarks, and tried desperately to determine the source. We joked about finding the perpetrator and offering him (or possibly her) a cork, but in a concert environment it’s nearly impossible to locate the source of flatulence; it’s just too loud and too crowded. Besides, even if we were able to pass along a cork, the person was standing so nearby and sharing such foulness that one of us would probably just have our eye put out when a gaseous eruption forced it to launch from the offending orifice.
So, our new friend’s scent wafted around our noses the entire show, a constant reminder that we’re all human (although some of us try a bit harder to disguise that fact in public). As bad as it was that Mr. Farty Pants couldn’t keep his odiferous problem under tighter containment, it probably wasn’t much better that Heather and I were carrying on about it like fourth graders. I guess sometimes, though, it’s just better to let loose, as our fellow concert-goer was doing. Why keep it bottled up?
Sometimes the best way to deal with something unpleasant is just to have a good laugh about it. And, acting your shoe size and not your age truly is cathartic once in a while. Parents don’t need to act maturely all the time. Occasionally and in the right company, sometimes it’s fun to enjoy a cackle or two about bodily functions. I like to prove my mettle with my boys by letting out a good belch or two at home occasionally. I’m just keeping it real and letting them know I can run with the big dogs, right? Is it decent and decorous behavior? Probably not. But, I like to imagine that I’m teaching them that even when you’re a grown up, you still have a bit of kid in you.
Moms Into Adventure 