I Missed The Memo

I missed the memo about nostalgia, shirtlessness, and secondhand smoke.

My husband and I recently had the dubious honor of being the oldest people in attendance at a Unity Tour show featuring Sublime and 311 (Sublime was good, but 311 actually kinda rocked my world…go figure.)   Our niece had some extra tickets so we were invited along to babysit enjoy the show.  I figured since these bands had their heydays more than a decade ago, there would be other old timers there, but the crowd consisted almost entirely of teens and twenty-somethings.  I was kind of freaked out and was eager for the sun to go down so no one could see my crow’s feet.

One thing that seemed to distinguish the whippersnappers from us fossils was the bare skin to clothing ratio.  It was a particularly steamy St. Louis evening and many of our fellow concert-goers were shirtless.  I think I may have passed over some sort of threshold from youth to (early) middle age because the idea of wearing a bikini top anywhere anywhere but the beach just seems like a stylistic non-starter. 

And then there was the pot…even as a younger woman, I’ve always been shockingly square when it comes to drugs.  It’s not that I’m morally opposed to marijuana as I don’t really see what the big difference is between pot and booze  (see, $22 worth of beer depicted below.)  It’s just that pot is illegal, and I’m a goodie-goodie at my core, so until that trip to Amsterdam, no weed for me.  The kiddos around us at the concert had no such inhibition, however.  I settled for the contact high ’cause I’m a dork.

Despite the fact that I was wearing a shirt and was mostly sober, I did actually enjoy myself at this show.  I was experiencing actual 90s nostalgia, and the infants around me were experiencing nostalgia for a decade they could not possibly remember.  Between sets, a DJ was spinning some tunes to keep the crowd pumped up and the playlist included Snoop Dog, Rage Against the Machine, Biz Markie, House of Pain, and Cypress Hill.  I smirked and giggled as the 19-year-olds next to us belted it out, “You, you got what I nee-eeeeeed!”   For realz ya’ll, this 22-year-old song is apparently as fresh and funny today as it was back in 1989 and it was delightful to see that the youth of today have developed an appreciation for the classics.

So yeah, I’m kinda sorta getting old. But 30 is the new 50 and apparently 2011 is the new 1991.   Good times and memo received.