larger than life.

In late spring I noticed a deal on Groupon for Backstreet Boys concert tickets.

Backstreet Boys?!

It is their 20th anniversary, they have a new album, and they were going back on tour. And they were coming to [outside] Detroit. As a long-standing true Backstreet Boys fan (not a cheap N*SYNC sell-out), I could not have been more excited. I bought myself a ticket and planned to go with my sister-in-laws. As it turned out, one of my sister-in-laws couldn't come, and my mom was in town, so my mom joined me and Jenny at the concert.

I had a vision of what this concert was going to be. Our tickets were for "open grass seating", so I imagined a pleasant evening sitting on a blanket in the grass with a few hundred fellow late-twenties Backstreet Boys stalwarts eating Qdoba. Well, the Qdoba part happened. We picked it up on our way there. But, people . . . my vision was not reality. As we approached the venue, there was a long line of cars headed the same direction. Huge parking lots were full. And when we got inside, the place was packed - standing room only - with thousands of fans. Many were mid-to-late twenties girl/women, meaning they could now legally drink and smoke (why on earth would a person in their twenties smoke? didn't they go to 4th grade and learn it was bad for them?), so the party was ROCKIN' as DJ Pauly D (heaven help me) started the show. We ate our Qdoba in the ruckus and smoke and I wondered how this would all play out.

Next was Jesse McCartney, for those of you who remember his one hit song, and Jenny and I took the opportunity to find concert t-shirts. They were a little more pricey than I could see myself spending, so after standing in line for the bathroom for 20 minutes, we headed back to our blanket on the grass. It was an hour and a half after we arrived, and it was time for the Boys.

Friends, it was magical. My heart was racing and I got goosebumps (who gets goosebumps at a concert? . . . what a mom thing). It wasn't just the 14-year-old inside of me that was excited. It was the nearly 27-year-old too. Because the Backstreet Boys are so dang cool. And 20 years later they have an assortment of marriages and children and they are still up there in their matching white suits with their synchronized dance moves and they are rocking it. And if they can rock it, so can I. So I did. We sang along with every word and I broke out my totally hip club-ready dance moves and I jumped up and down to the dance songs and it was just totally way awesome. It occurred to me while I was standing for those hours on my aching mom-of-three feet that I'm there. I'm at the point in my life where no matter what other kinds of music emerge in the future, nothing will be as awesome as the soundtrack of my youth. Kind of like how my mom still loves the Partridge Family. And I came home and found all my BSB music and put it on my iPhone and lately I've been running and driving and doing dishes to their fabulous tunes (Carly is a fan of "The Call" and always requests "the one where they say "gotta go"!). Chris wants to know when this phase will end. And as I stand there in my basketball shorts and BSB concert t-shirt, I declare, "Never!"

Did you hear that? BSB concert t-shirt. And this is the best part of the whole story. As we were streaming out of the venue after the concert, surrounded by drunken people with homemade t-shirts reading "Am I original? Yeahh!", we saw a man selling "concert" shirts in the parking lot. My mom jokingly said "Oh, for five dollars?" as we walked by. "Twenty," they guy replied (inside they were going for $40). Still walking away and still joking, my mom said, "Oh, I've only got 11." The guy chased after us, I mean actually ran and grabbed my mom's shoulder, saying "Ok! Ok! I'll take 11." And in that spot my mom bought me a Backstreet Boys concert t-shirt. She sure drives a hard bargain. A minute later we ran into his partner, and I asked if I could trade sizes for something smaller. One shirt he grabbed didn't have a tag at all, and the next was a different brand from the first. Obviously these shirts were totally legit. But I got my small and we headed out to our car, where we waited for over an hour to get out of the parking lot and watched drunken people having shouting matches, singing loudly to all they passed by, and standing up out of their sunroofs to belt the BSB tune playing in their car. It was way past my bedtime by the time we hit the road, but thankfully we made it home in one piece. I was delirious but still still buzzing from excitement.

It was such a fun night, and I have to admit I'm quite sad it is over.

Thanks to my mom and Jenny for rocking out with me.

And thanks to the Backstreet Boys for reuniting and keeping me young.

xoxo.

(P.S. I was just joking about the N*SYNC sell-out thing. Bye, bye, bye.)