EastGirlsWest

On the eve-eve of my 35th birthday, I somehow found myself at an all-ages concert. It was the Arctic Monkeys first show in San Diego, and we watched them perform with thousands of other fans, many of whom were half my age or younger. I think even the band members are still freakin’ teenagers.

Now to be fair, there was a decent smattering of people who looked our age in the audience. But I couldn’t help wondering if they were parents, lurking towards the back, a safe distance from their young teenager but close to enough to make sure they didn’t end up in the parking lot drinking beer after the show with some skeevy 22-year-old. On the other hand, the whole Grup philosophy claims that despite a 20 year age difference, we are all listening to the same music. So maybe they weren’t parents.

But the age thing really hit me as I was standing in a long line for the ladies room in front of three 14-year-old girls who had braces, but no breasts yet. While waiting for my turn in the stall, I could actually feel my ovaries shrivel as time passed. They were giggling together over every picture they’d already snapped with their cameraphones, all wearing the same Artic Monkeys t-shirt and self-conciously stroking their hair. I did not have my camerphone. I left it in the car, which was not very MySpace of me. Instead, I was eyeing the traffic in and out of the stalls, and the general condition of the bathroom, thinking “I bet there’s not going to be any goddamn toilet paper when I get in there.”

So I leaned over from my place in line and grabbed two paper towels to take in with me. The girls stared, wide-eyed, and actually stopped giggling for three seconds. One of them whispered to the other, “that’s a really good idea.” They followed suit. And I coudn’t decide if I was cool in my experienced, concert-going, ladies-room wisdom, or really mom-like for thinking about toilet paper so much.

Meanwhile, The Boyfriend is perenially loved by the youth. Thanks to umpteen semesters of teaching Electronic Media Management at SDSU, we are constantly running in to his former students. Somewhere between the opening band and the main event, one of the guys standing in front of us turned around and said, “Dude! You were, like, the best teacher I ever had!”

And then the Monkeys came out, and they were loud and fun and we cheered and shook our hips and moved our arms and possibly even sang along a few times. And it felt great. And you know what? I didn’t feel so old.