I typed my blog post on my iPhone in the dark in the back of our car while we sat in unmoving traffic last night. We went to see Imagine Dragons in concert and got an outstanding parking space. I don’t want to have a blind child. I don’t know if she wants to be sighted at this point because all she can remember is the vision she has, but I’d trade just about anything for her to have her sight back.
But that’s an academic discussion and sort of a downer. Let’s talk about the Imagine Dragons concert, starting with our crazy good parking spot and ending on the long wait in that same parking lot for the attendees to depart, one car at a time.
We used our handicapped placard for parking, which I always feel strange doing, but my daughter definitely qualifies for the privilege. We arrived earlyish and got a spot within fifty yards of the concert entrance. We had passed thousands of people in line just to get into the still closed gates. Our parking spot was ideal, but did we have to go to the back of the line to get in?
Apparently not because when they opened the gates we walked through a handicapped entrance area and were able to get ideal seats on the lawn. We spread out our blankets and told the other two families we’d hold the spots for them until they arrived.
My children were hungry and so were we. Once we had our seats (directly in front of the stage) secured we took turns getting food. My husband took my son first. Once they returned, my daughter and I went, very slowly, through the now-packed lawn area, avoiding people while she tried to use her cane, until we got to the paved walkway.
We got to the food counter, ordered chicken tenders, fries and a pretzel for my daughter. I didn’t want to order more because I had to hold her hand and the food and navigate us back through crowds of people. I asked if they took Apple Pay when the server was handing me the food and a man on the side said, “you don’t need that. It’s taken care of.”
I looked around, wondering if it was a, “pay it forward” kind of thing and told him, “please tell whomever I need to thank, thank you from us. That’s very kind.” It turned out he was the one who had given us the food for free. And he wasn’t done yet. He asked if we needed any drinks. I said I was getting only what I could carry back. That wasn’t a problem, he would have someone help me back to our seats. He wanted to know if we wanted several other things and was most insistent so we accepted a funnel cake.
He brought another staff member over and had him take down the names of my daughter (and my son when he heard she had a brother at the concert as well) because we had told him it was her first concert. I’m holding our food while he told me to come over to the funnel cake stand and I held that on top of our food.
Then he took us over to the merchandise stand and asked my daughter to pick out a t-shirt. He said, “I have a little pull here after all these years.” He and I talked about the venue’s history as I’d been going there since he started working. As he walked us back to our seats he said he was struck by my daughter and me weaving our way through the crowd and being patient as we waited to order our food. He has a close friend who’s seventeen-year-old son has lost his vision.
We thanked him and I told him he made our night very special. He said, “I’m not done, I’ll be back.” And sure enough he was. He had two certificates stating my children were attending their first concert. And he had the t-shirts. I gave him a big hug and said he had touched my heart with his kindness.
After the concert (which we loved) we discovered our very close parking spot put us about last to get out. So I wrote a short blog post in the car and put off this story of kindness until tonight.
The Big Boy Update: For some reason after seeing the lead singer of Imagine Dragons sing with his shirt off the entire concert, my son has been going around shirtless. He says it’s because he’s hot…but I wonder.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter has a fever. Suddenly today she’s sick. She feels bad but has nothing other than a fever in symptoms. We’ll check her out tomorrow and see if we need to take her into the doctor.
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