I know this entry is supposed to be
about our adventure on Thursday in
Manchester, NH but I cannot properly
tell the story without telling you about my day on Wednesday first.
Wednesday I was subbing and whenever
I get a break I usually check my phone for messages and what have you. Since
I’m just a sub, I have some time to kill. I was thinking to myself how nice it
was going to be to go to the concert in Rhode Island that night and how
fortunate I was to have the next day off to be able to catch up on sleep so
that I wouldn’t be exhausted when I came back to sub on Friday. Then, I got
this line of (some what) cryptic text messages from Megan and I knew that
Friday I would be more sleep deprived then I planned. (I can’t tell you the
exact messages because we text a lot so those ones are LONG gone, but in
general this is how it went down.)
Megan: So, you have tomorrow off, right? (cryptic)
Me: Yes I do!
Megan: Manchester is only an hour and a
half drive from Norwood.
(Cryptic but I’m starting to get it)
Me: I know.
Megan: Did you see the discussion on
SNCmusic? (cryptic)
Me (being that I was teaching): No, I haven’t seen it. (OUT
WITH IT ALREADY!)
Megan: Someone has two extra tickets to
tomorrow’s show in Manchester.
They’re second row. Should I get
them? (AH HA! There it is!)
Me: Do it!
Megan and I never object to crazy
adventures. If we did, you wouldn’t be reading this blog. She contacted
the person selling them and as it turned out he was willing to give them to us
as a two for one deal.
How crazy would we have been to pass
up THAT deal! (just for the record, we were willing to pay full price.)
Fast-forward to Thursday and now it
was my turn to wait for Megan to get to my apartment. Even with all the time I
had I still wasn’t ready when she got there. We had to leave earlier because
even though it was only an hour and a half drive, we would undoubtedly be
making that drive during rush hour traffic. We got to Manchester early and
pulling from our prior experiences at the last two shows, having dinner before
hand was a must. We stopped at Chipotle because usually when we see one or if
you even just mention it to either one of us our reaction is “mmmm chipotle”
and anything else is no longer a choice.
We finally found our way to the
venue. We weren’t super early like we normally are but we were early. The only
difference was that usually we have our tickets so we just go in and goof off
in the venue for a while. This time we had no choice but to wait, either in our
car or outside in the cold, for the person we were getting our tickets from. He
(his name was Bob and I believe his wife’s name was Liza. Its possible I made
that up) showed up about 15 minutes before the show started. Close call but
fortunately we had decided to go sans lights this night (it usually takes a
while to untangle and turn on all of the strands. The leis over the summer were
WAY easier!) The night before in Rhode Island we had had a discussion with some
of the guys about how weird it would be if didn’t wear anything glowing, so
naturally, that’s exactly what we did. It seemed like a perfect plan.
Basically, our mission to be
incognito failed miserably. We were in the second row, the two seats in front
of us were empty (seriously, what are the odds?!) and I’m pretty sure DR saw us
before he was even completely out from behind that black curtain.
At this point the lobby was empty.
Fastest meet and greet ever? No. it was just upstairs. We found the line,
passed some time trying to figure out why the woman emptying the trash barrels
was dressed in her fancy evening wear. We came to the likely conclusion that
she was working off her ticket. We met some girls who were standing behind us
in line and they had some mistake information about the show in Boston. They
were also from Boston and had come to New Hampshire because they didn’t think
the guys had a show in Boston. Finally we got to Jerome, I handed him my
bear’s shirt, without the bear. This warranted a strange look from Jerome to
which I said, “Don’t worry! I bought the bear that goes with it!” and of course
the next thing we heard was “hmmm you don’t have any lights?” We told Jerome
that we were trying to be “incognito” and Mike told us “It didn’t work!” *sigh
we know* We both had been wearing scarves and Mike informed us that they had
given us away. We were in a hockey arena and I won’t apologize, I love my
scarf. Upon seeing the shirts, Charlie became very concerned that there were
naked bears on the loose. Don’t worry, we had wrangled them and they were
contained to our purses. (close call, I know!) He then put the shirt on a
hockey puck someone else had given him. He claimed that they would now be his
puck holder. It was beginning to look like our bears were destined to stay in
the nude. Don then took a shirt and put it on his hockey puck and stood it up.
After doing so he casually looked up at me and said “Hey, Amanda” my only
response was “Oh, hey Don!” Randy was then instructed by Charlie to put the
bear’s shirt on his hockey puck when it got to him. I can’t recall if he
actually did, although if I had to guess, he did. After I was sure my bear’s
shirt wasn’t going home as a puck holder I found myself standing in front of
Tyler and just because I was curious and nosy I decided to ask about the
Hyannis Sound guys.
Me: So are any of the guys from Hyannis
Sound coming to the Boston show?
Tyler: Yeah, like 5 of them. They’re older
so you probably won’t know them.
Me: Well, we went to the alumni show
this year? So, we might recognize some of them?
Tyler: Oh yeah, maybe you will.
I really didn’t have anywhere for
that conversation to go, I was honestly just being nosy. I hope Tyler didn’t
find it too creepy. I didn’t really have much time to think about it because
before I knew it I was caught up in a conversation with Walt.
Walt: So, I just have to ask, are you two
required by law to dress alike?
Me & Megan (looking at
each other for a moment): No
Me: we just spend WAY too much time
together, and stuff like this happens unplanned.
Walt: oh okay, cause I was gonna say, I
want to hear about this law.
That conversation was abruptly over
when I heard Seggie yell, (although he’ll claim it wasn’t yelling) “WHERE ARE
YOUR BEADS!?” (umm Seggie, they’re lights!) We tried to explain to him that we
were trying to be incognito and blend in with the “normal folk” to which his
ONLY reply was “DON’T EVER DO THAT AGAIN!” Megan then said what we were ALL
thinking, “it was weird!” and it was…we didn’t like it. After we had finished
getting a stern talking to from Seggie, the shirts we had had made their way to
Ryan.
Ryan: (upon seeing the
bear shirts) oh no, there are naked bears
somewhere!
Me: Yeah, they’re our bears!
(Which I assume came out sounding
like “ah beahs!” because Ryan then said…..)
Ryan: (through his laughter) yes! “ah
beahs”
We reminisced about what we had
talked about the night before with us not having lights. Ryan told us not to
worry because he saw us (we kind of figured since he waved to us but it was
still reassuring.) At this point, DR had joined our conversation just as we
were describing our plans to come in disguises (you know, the glasses with the
fake nose and moustache.)
DR then said to us, “Right, because
that’d be incognito! (You know it!) I
can just picture you guys with your glasses. (Complete with hand motions) I would have LOST it!” (Ummm note to self: definitely TRY THAT!)
After this exchange Ryan was curious as to the other shows we’d be
attending.
Ryan: So you’re coming to Boston tomorrow
and Baltimore. Are you coming to the Hersey shows?
Me: No, We do eventually have to go to
work!
Ryan: Oh yeah, work, to pay to get to
Baltimore.
Megan: No, to pay for the tickets we just
bought tonight!”
Me: Yeah, we bought the tickets about 15
minutes before the show.
There was a discussion on the site
and we said ‘We’ll take them!’”
Megan: yup. Mine!
Me: Our new friend Bob gave them to us!
DR & Ryan both laughed at this
exchange between us. I asked DR if there would be group pictures this night (I
already knew the answer, but I always like to double check, just in case)
While Megan and I were waiting for
our pictures we were talking about something (probably something ridiculous,
because I don’t think we’ve ever had a serious conversation.) Megan must have
made a wise remark to me because it caused me to yell “DON’T SPEAK TO ME LIKE
THAT!”
There was an eruption of laughter
from us and some odd looks from innocent bystanders. The guys walking over to
the stairs distracted us and I couldn’t contain myself so I yelled, “Oh yay!
They’re doing them on the stairs! Those always come out the best!” (It’s true,
they do!)
It was getting close to our turn
(there weren’t a lot of people there getting group photos) so I started
throwing my stuff on the ground.
Megan: Are you bringing your bear?
Me: No.
Megan: WHY NOT!”
(I ignored this question)
Megan (as she throws her
stuff on the ground): Now I’m going to whine at you!
Me: WHY!?
She didn’t answer me, just started
walking over to the stairs for pictures but it wasn’t our turn. Since I didn’t
want to cause a scene, I obviously yelled as loud as I could at her,
“IT’S NOT OUR TURN YET!
WE HAVE TO WAIT!”
As this was coming out of my mouth there
was a loud noise that came from down the hall. Both of us stopped what we doing
and almost simultaneously said “WHAT was that?!” Megan figured out that it was the
floor polisher before I did and said, “Lets go squeegee the floor” (I’m not
sure why she said squeegee, maybe she didn’t quite figure out what it was.) As
we started walking over to the machine we heard Richard say “Ladies…”
indicating that it was our turn for a picture. While we were about take the
picture Charlie became concerned about our lights again.
Charlie: What?! No lights? No signs?
Nothing glowing?!
Ryan: Nope, just their smiles!
 |
| Take one. Poor Seggie was parched! |
 |
| Take two. Still very thirsty |
(awwww, right?) Richard snapped
the picture and told us, “Lets take another one, that one’s a bit fuzzy.”
Although, upon further inspection that picture was not fuzzy, but hey we’re not
complaining about getting to take another picture. We made our way to
Richard to retrieve Megan’s camera and we heard the normal shouting of
“Hahvahd”, ”Mahky Mahk”, and “Chowdah” which ALWAYS makes us smile.
We got plenty of wishes for safe
traveling from the guys and Richard told us how great it was to see us and said
“See ya tomorrow.” (I was getting really used to hearing that almost every
night.)
Just as we were about to retrieve our
things we were held hostage (although, I guess that’s not the right word when
you’re completely willing to stay) by Jerome, who put his arms around us and
gave us a giant hug. I’m not even exaggerating when I tell you that we
literally SKIPPED out of that venue. The ride home was filled with comments of disbelief.
We couldn’t believe that we had ALMOST missed this show, that we got to see
them tomorrow, and that it was even possible to have as much fun as we just
had! We weren’t sure how the next few days were going to top what we had already
experienced but we knew they wouldn’t disappoint and we couldn’t wait!
Stay Tuned for Boston!
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