Hello, hello (hola!)

It was our third time to see U2 in concert and it was going so beautifully. The crowd was pumped and Bono was sharing his glorious voice and it was entirely too fantastic. Until it wasn’t. We were extremely grateful for even being in the arena that night but we were nowhere near where we would have loved to have been seated. A problem that could have been rectified fairly easily if we were willing to put our household into extreme debt, but we were neither so spontaneous or dismissive of our station in life to cough up the exorbitant amount of Benjamins to be able to sit with the cool kids. Which is why we ended up in the nose-nose bleeds, holding on for dear life, one mis-step away from plummeting to certain death, standing just beneath the overlarge sign announcing our seating section.

We found ourselves in that (almost) post concert world of decision regarding the necessity of leaving before they sang the one song we were waiting for (always at the end of the event, damn it) or just settling in for at least an extra hour afterward, waiting for the hell of traffic to dissipate before we even made an attempt. At that time we weren’t in the mindset of wanting concerts to just start at fucking seven o’clock already (!) but I was getting tired and, of course, we both had work in the morning. I grabbed his elbow, knowing he probably wouldn’t be happy with my choice, and gestured my head towards the aisle. He nodded, swigged the last of his beer, and nudged me to start moving.

Lights go down, it’s dark…

After trying to move past the line of people dancing between us and the aisle, I found myself overwhelmed and irritated by the darkness of the area and the sharp brightness of thousands of phone flashlights swaying to the ballad that was currently being performed. I grabbed the railing as quick as I could after I brushed past the last person in the row and closed my eyes. All of a sudden the world was overwhelming and I was holding on for dear life. I was happy to have both of my hands available, to help bring myself to a complete standstill by wrapping my arms around the cold metal. My husband tried to assist as he could but there really wasn’t anything to be done–I just needed to take a deep breath and keep on keeping on. 

Unfortunately, that required that I now move my feet down, down, down the stairs to the flat surface that would safely lead me out of the excitement and into the bright land of concessions. I clutched as I stepped and I slowly, slowly worked my way down the stairs. I didn’t remember it being so steep when we were on our way up, but that may just have been a side-effect or distraction of mumbling and bitching about our shitty seats way back before we settled into our night. Whatever the reason, I was in a little bit of a panic as I am someone that (more often than not) partakes in falling down stairs in all types of situations. I thought that I should be able to inch my way down without too much trouble but I was also distracted enough about falling that I was debating whether it would be better to let the hubby stand in front of me (to shield me from certain death by falling but surely at risk of being crushed to death by a flying wife) or behind me (in relative safety, but with the worst possible view of me as I did my best impression of a skydiver jumping out of a plane without a parachute). Feeling that I should probably spare his life, I continued down. 

I’m at a place called Vertigo…

I think I should probably state here that at the bottom of the staircase was a very comforting (*insert sarcasm here) piece of plexiglass, confidently attached to thin railing in a way that would suggest that it totally believed that it could keep any person in that section of the arena from bodily harm. It seemed to sparkle and dance with the reflections of tiny dots of light swaying to the music as much as it seemed abused and dingy from the smears of fingerprints and splashes of liquid that were smudged upon it. It is safe to say that I wasn’t comforted in its presence in any significant way other than a destination I needed to reach in order to make my escape. 

Fortunately, I was making such good progress that I was only four or five steps from salvation. Unfortunately, my natural inclinations kicked in and I managed to somehow trip over my own foot. Really. Truly. I did that. And it is so bewildering to learn how much a person can live and die in a single second. I was shocked, but I was calm. I was embarrassed, but I was alone in my mind. I was in pain, but my body didn’t feel a thing. I was going to die, and no one was going to notice. Oh shit, he was going to see me go ass over feet and that would be our last interaction together in this life. Could someone die of mortification and nose-diving into fellow concert goers at the same time? In that second, I was convinced…YES!

My legs buckled and I fell forward, bracing my arms for impact against the aforementioned plexiglass (something that could never be entrusted to save a heavyweight like me) and welcomed (but not really) the surety of death. Surprised when I didn’t keep hurtling down, down, down, I slowly realized that a hand had grabbed my shirt and yanked me back to the bottom step. My heart beating a million miles an hour, I grabbed my hair and pulled myself into a heaving ball of terror while rocking back and forth thinking of how I had just escaped my doom. I was scared, and thankful, and mortified about having such a moment in front of hundreds of people and I was just fucking ready to go home.

My savior husband helped me up and escorted me to the exit as we had quickly discovered that I had twisted my knee during the frightening event. I also discovered that the power of U2 is all-powerful, as it seemed that no one around us had in fact seen me almost lose my life. Yay! And, damn you! We limped along together to try to find first aid and any kind of sturdy surface that would allow me to sit down and relax for just one lousy second. A second that turned into a minute and then many minutes. So many minutes that even though I was thankful for the attention of the staff, I was pissed that the concert was now over and we were going to have to deal with traffic after all. Grrrrrr.

Death indeed.   

©DRB 2024

Photo by Karina Carvalho on Unsplash