I am the coolest dad. I know because several people told me yesterday.
A few days ago, Misty and the girls were watching a DVD of No Doubt music videos. Misty was gearing up for their concert in Atlanta, for which she and our friend Chez had primo tickets. In the midst of dancing and singing along with the videos, Emily said, "I wish I could go with you, Mommy." It was sweet and sincere, and I love that Emily is excited about any kind of music, so I told Misty I'd check online to see how much lawn seats cost, and if they were reasonable I'd get tickets for myself and Emily.
As it turned out, lawn seats were a mere $10 ($15 after Ticketmaster service charges, but much better than the $90 Misty paid for hers). I ordered a pair, and Emily was thrilled.
When we got to the venue yesterday, the four of us made the long hike from where we parked to the amphitheater. Upon finally reaching the gate, Misty and Chez learned that their tickets, which were being held at will call, were only available from the gate on the other side. That was going to be another really long walk (indeed, it took them about 25 minutes), so Emily and I decided to go ahead in (we'd printed our tickets from online) and find a spot on the grass for ourselves and just hope that our companions would be able to find us after the show.
As we walked to the gate though, we were stopped by a man who asked us if we were big fans of No Doubt. I've been stopped on the way in to concerts with such questions before, so I figured he was taking a survey. I wasn't a big fan, I told him, but I liked the music. Mainly it was my wife who was the uber-fan, I explained, but that Emily had expressed interest in the show at the last minute. After a couple more questions the guy told us that he had an extra pair of tickets in the covered seats and we could have them if we wanted them. He said he didn't want to deal with scalpers and would rather just give them away to someone who would appreciate them.
And did we ever appreciate them! The seats were much closer than we'd have been on the lawn, and Misty and Chez probably never would have found us among the massive crowd at the back. As we sat next to the super-nice couple who'd given us the tickets, they also let me borrow a cell phone to text Misty and let her know where we were.
The concert was amazing, and I'm so glad Emily prompted me to go. She and I had a blast. At one point she hollered into my ear, "Why can't we turn it up this loud in the car?!" I held her up as much as I could during the show as she sang along to all the songs she knew. When I wasn't holding her, she stood in her chair as I tried to keep her from dancing and falling off. All the people around us were very gracious about Emily's presence -- from giving her room to see, to helping her balance on her chair when other people would squeeze by carrying beers. As I mentioned earlier, several people told me what a cool dad I was for bringing my little girl to the concert. But the best reward was in seeing the smiles on Emily's face.
Closer up, Misty had a Flip video camera with her and recorded several clips from No Doubt's performance. Here's the how the concert opened (You can hear Misty and Chez screaming like fools in the video).
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