Jason's Untimely Thoughts

I took Jack, Adelaide, and a friend of hers to the Miley Cyrus concert last night in St. Louis.  The kids had been extremely excited about it for a few weeks now.  Jack wasn’t originally going to go, but after Adelaide exhausted invitations to all her friends that we thought might be able to go, she finally relented and asked him.

My mom rode from Columbia to St. Louis with us, she’d stayed in Columbia after the football game to watch Adelaide who had been sick.  We turned on the “Miley drive” songlist from my phone and the kids sang and played all the way to St. Louis.  We did hear a few times, thought, that the drive wasn’t as fun as they thought it would be.

At the concert, we were early so got in easily.  Grabbed some souvenirs, with the mighty assistance of a credit card, then went to our seats in Section 314.  Up high, but 2nd row, not too bad.  Went to the nearest concession stand where we came away with 4 cheeseburgers, 3 lemonades, and a large Pepsi, again with the mighty assistance of a credit card.  Returned to our seats in 314 and ate, only spilling a couple of the drinks in the process.

A few minutes after finishing, a friend at the show texted wondering where we were sitting.  I told her, but for some reason grabbed the tickets out of my pocket again.  Oops, we were supposed to be in 317, not 314, the altitude must have impacted my reading comprehension.  So, packed up and moved to 317, sorry about the spilled Pepsi and lemonade, whoever came next!

We had a minute-by-minute countdown to 7:00, when the show was supposed to start.  After the (awful awful awful) opening band, everyone headed to the bathroom.  Um, there are a lot of females at this show, the line is stretching out forever, I can’t help them much, and Jack might be close to having an accident.   The girls insist they’re fine, some nice lady offers to keep an eye on them as the line moves, so off Jack and I go.  About 10 minutes later, the girls finally emerge ready for Miley.

I’m sure the kids all thought Miley was excellent… they sang, danced, sang, danced, yelled, sang, and danced.  All in all, it was a fine show.

My thoughts, however, drifted…..

• Some moms clearly bought tickets and brought their kids just so they could get all dressed up and sing to Miley themselves.  Clearly.
• Some dads weren’t aware that dancing with the crowd of 10-12 year old girls, even if one of them is your daughter, looks creepy.
• Miley either needs to wear longer clothes, stand farther from the edge of the stage, hire considerably taller cameramen, or all three.

The kids really did have a great time, but Sarah should have been there too, was mostly where my mind drifted.

After the show, we go back out to the van, I’m extremely impressed at how quickly we’re getting out of there.  Load everyone up, lean their seats back so they can go to sleep, pull out of there at about 9:30.  I go through a stop sign, no problem.  I go through the next stop light, turn left, hit the accelerator, hear a THUMP, from the back of the van.  Followed by “Dad, I fell over” in a surprisingly calm voice.

I finish the turn, look in the mirror, don’t really see Jack anywhere.  I pull over immediately, look back, he’s laid back like an astronaut prepared for takeoff, still buckled into his carseat into the main seat, like it’s no big deal.  The girls start to laugh immediately.  Instead of leaning his seat back, evidently I initially unlatched, so the seat could flip over.  Could, and in fact, did.   We laughed as hard as we could without making him think we were laughing at him.  A quick fix, back on the road, all three kids asleep by 9:45.

It was a good time.  Much thanks to the grandparents for thinking of and buying the tickets.