Attention: People of the male persuasion may find the descriptions in this post disturbing.
It wasn't long ago that I was an old
fuddy duddy, grudgingly watching
Cody Simpson performing at the Capitol
building in Lansing during Silvers Bells in the City. He was a punk
who looked like he just turned 12 and he wore these ridiculous purple
pants that sagged down to his thighs. The young girls in the audience
were yelling, “I want to marry you, Cody!” I was yelling, “Pull
your pants up, kid!”
I'm not sure what has transpired in the
few short years since then. Maybe it was my girls' evolution into
teenagers that fueled my passion for the “younger” music
scene, but somewhere along the way, I fell in love. Not with Cody
Simpson, you pervs. I fell in love with a much older, sophisticated
group of boys: One Direction.
Oh, my heavens, I have 1D fever so bad, it
hurts.
My girls introduced me to 1D that same
year. I heard my daughter talking about the boys in 1D and,
attempting to get in on the conversation, I asked, “Oh, which
classroom is that?”
My daughter's eyes rolled so far back
in her head that I'm sure she caught glimpses of her pubescent brain.
“They don't go to our school, Mom! It's
One Direction!” Soon I
became acquainted with their first hit, “What Makes You Beautiful”
and I. Was. Hooked.
Extremely catchy song, adorable boys from England
and Ireland.
No going back.
It was over.
Stick a fork in me, I was
done!
Since then I've been following them
right along with my girls, fueled by an insatiable appetite for their
music, their latest videos, their newest albums, and their adorable
accents. Maybe this has something to do with the fact that I married
into a British family, I don't know.
My girls tentatively accepted me as a
“Directioner,” and they still think I get a little carried away
sometimes, but since I'm willing to take them on road trips to see 1D
in concert, they have little room to complain. Except when, during the
concerts, I shriek, “Will you marry me, Harry?”
However, I am getting “older.” My
constitution isn't what it once was. I'm not in great shape, not used
to screaming at the top of my lungs, and my middle has expanded to
make me look a bit like the Stay-Puft marshmallow man. These little
quirks proved to be a hassle during our recent One Direction
escapade.
For 1D's most recent concert in
Detroit, the girls and I chose to stay overnight so that we wouldn't
have to drive out of a grid-locked downtown Detroit after a
late-night concert. I got a pretty good deal at the Renaissance
Center Marriott, so we booked a room.
Here's one thing I learned: do NOT stay
at the Renaissance Center unless you have trained for a triathlon and
have a degree in physics. I'm sure the place is an engineering
marvel, but I would personally like to strangle the architect with a
pair of control-top, reinforced pantyhose. I'm pretty certain that we
parked somewhere in Canada and dragged our luggage through all four
towers until we finally found the elevators to our oddly-shaped room
in the middle tower.
From now on, I think I'll opt to stay
at a nice, rectangular-shaped building that has all its doors facing
the parking lot, preferably one-story place; two stories, max. When
you get to be my age, taking a swift-moving elevator to the 35th
floor tends to throw off your equilibrium. I staggered to our room,
certainly turning a lovely shade of chartreuse, and immediately took
some motion sickness medicine, hoping it would kick in before I had
to take the elevator back down to go to the concert.
The girls and I got ready for the
concert – they looked adorable in their 1D gear. However, in
my skirt and 1D t-shirt, I looked a bit more like a black, white and
red bowl of jello with a smattering of 1D insignia here and there,
especially over the parts of me that tend to jiggle the most. However
I did get a very nice compliment from a middle-aged, gold-toothed
gentleman as we walked past him on the way to the concert: “Cute
Mama.” Um, at that moment, I was extremely thankful that there were
literally thousands of people walking to Ford Field along with us.
Speaking of walking, it was only eight
blocks from our hotel to Ford Field, but again, being of slightly
more portly stature than most 1D concert-goers, I found that by the
time I reached the concert, I had a terrible rash on my thighs. About
half-way through the concert, I felt my slip...slipping, so I ran to
the bathroom where I discovered that it had indeed lost all of its
elastic. What were my choices? I certainly didn't want to wad the
thing up and stuff it into my purse. It was useless anyway and I
didn't want to be seen carrying a piece of lingerie to the trash can,
so I neatly deposited it into the other receptacle
conveniently located in all women's bathrooms.
The concert itself was fabulous,
despite the fact that an Amazon-sized woman deposited herself in
front of me, and that buying water and pizza required a small
business loan, and that every time I put my hands up in the air, I
hit the girl next to me in the butt, and that at the end of the
concert, I had such severe chatter in my ears that I sincerely
thought I had gone partially deaf.
After the concert, we were all herded
out like cattle, along with the Tigers fans who had “conveniently”
exited Comerica Park at exactly the same time. When we finally
reached our room at the luxurious Ren Center, we discovered that we
had gotten neither the rollaway bed we had requested nor the
refrigerator. The yogurt we had brought for breakfast spoiled, and my two teenage girls and I shared the king-sized bed, hoping for a peaceful night's sleep in preparation for the next
day's activities.
What were the next day's activities?
You may ask. Why, nothing but
stalking staking out the hotels where
the band might be staying. Our first tip was that they might be at
the MGM Grand. We took the People Mover, a fun yet terrifying
little contraption, which dropped us near the MGM Grand. We joined a
small group of girls who had parked themselves on a small triangle of
land facing the back side of the hotel where there were five or six
tour buses parked. And we just sat. And watched. And nothing
happened, except that my girls caught sight of Drake, who was also
staying at the MGM and performing in Detroit, along with Lil Wayne. I
have no idea who those people are; my heart belongs fully to 1D and
partially to 5 Seconds of Summer, the opening band for 1D for the
second year in a row.
So we spent the better part of the
afternoon on a wild goose chase, following their scent, pursuing each
Twitter clue, tracking each tip and chasing every group of screeching
girls when they suddenly dropped everything and sped to a new
location.
We finally ended at the Westin Book
Cadillac, dehydrated and high on diesel exhaust fumes. We
discovered that some of the One Direction crew was actually staying
there and we all got our panties in a bundle when we saw them come
out with their 1D backpacks and start loading up the tour buses. But sadly, we never saw
Niall, Harry, Louis, Liam or Zayn. The hotel manager eventually came
out and told us, in no uncertain terms, the stars were
not staying at
that hotel. We ultimately gave up, as it was late in the day and the
boys were likely already over at the arena, preparing for the
evening's concert, and I had to pick up my other kids from their
weekend locations and make the hour and a half drive back to Lansing.
When we picked up my 2
nd
daughter who stayed with a friend in Ypsilanti, she got into the van
and told me, “Mom, you have lipstick on your teeth.”
My oldest daughter, who had been
chasing and fangirling and shrieking and running with me all weekend,
spoke up. “Oh, yeah Mom, that's been there all day.”
I'm so glad we didn't meet One
Direction.
However, let me leave you with these photos. If there was no other reason for me to be a One Direction fan, these pics would still convince me:
