What the Hell Happened While I was Away?

 

What the Hell Happened While I was Away?

 

As things are easing up virus wise, Mrs. C and I attended a concert for the first time in years.  It was a Doo-Wop concert featuring groups like the Duprees (Have You Heard), The Brooklyn Bridge (The Worst that Could Happen) and The Tokens (The Lion Sleeps Tonight).  Needless to say it was not a young crowd.

The theater was filled with wispy DA haircuts and bulging waists. There were walkers and a few wheel chairs.  There was not any annoying high arm waving, isle dancing and “We love you” screaming.

It was an old crowd.

The world has changed somewhat since the pandemic and not in a good way for old people.

The night started out with parking confusion.

We used to park in the garage across from the theater.  Easy peasy.

Pull up to the attendant, grab your ticket and pay on the way out…five maybe ten dollars, I don’t remember.

These days, not so easy.  Drive right in, park you car and then try and figure out how to pay.  Easy for young people, old people not so much.  We were surrounded by a confused generation of Doo-Wop fans trying to pay for parking.

It seems these days you have to point you phone camera at a square blob of squiggly ink and wait for a web site to appear.  Then you fill in a series of questions ending with your credit card number to find you are being charged $20 for 7 hours of parking.  Even this was not as simple as it could have been as the parking garage offered horrendous internet reception.

Thanks to Mrs. C we were able to figure out how to pay and she also walked several other confused seniors through the process.

Before we could enter the theater we had to prove we were vaccinated. 

Fortunately we had our proof of vaccination on our phone and that was accepted…not that I think they really looked at it.

Also masks were optional.  I wondered if they needed to tell us that.  Like would it be possible to NOT allow mask wearing? 

Now we are in the theater and of course before the show starts all us old people needed to pee.  Even that has now changed.

The restrooms are all non-gender.  I guess that is fine for young people, but old people balk at peeing next to the other sex.  The room was entered with great trepidation.

It turned out that these restrooms only had stalls, and a lot of them, so it was weird, but not too awful.  Not for number one anyway, pretty sure number two would be an issue for most of us geezers.

Most women seemed to like the idea of for once seeing men have to wait in a long line.

Parking done, entering accomplished and peeing over, it was time to settle into our seats.

Wait!  Don’t we get a program?

Yup, except the program required using your phone and pointing the camera at another squiggly ink square and downloading it on your phone.  Apparently if you do not have a smart phone, you can not park, enter a theater or get a program.  At least you do not need a phone to pee…yet.

Anyway the show was fun.  The falsetto lead singers are not what they used to be, and the dance steps have lost a step.  Still the groups are  entertaining and everyone seemed to enjoy the show.

The entertainment made you feel young again…everything else, not so much.

At 2:00 am we were woken up by an phone text beep.

“What is that, you girlfriend texting you?”

“Ha Ha! No, it is the parking garage letting us know our time has expired.”

What the Hell happened while I was away?