Psst! Hey, you!

Once, when I was in the record store when I was 18 (back in the olden days, the place where the music lived was called a record store, because music came on these black vinyl disks big as today’s large-size pizzas called “records”)(pizzas were bigger then), I was looking through the rock & roll albums, and while I’m doing that, I hear, “Psst!  Hey, pssssst!”  So I freeze and kinda glance over to my right, towards the sound, and without moving my head that way, because I’d seen movies, darn it, and no good thing every started with “Psst!” in a public place, and there’s this older guy in a white Levi’s denim jacket, standing about 5′ away from me, pretending to thumb through the albums while he leans toward me, making ever-intensifying “Psst!” noises.

So I whisper, “What?” out of one corner of my mouth, and he looks around the store real quickly and then leans over and hisses, “Wanna buy some tickets to The Who?  I got two.”

Now, instantly, I think two things.  One is “heck, yeah,” because I was 18, about to turn 19, and it was The Who’s first farewell tour, and they were going to be playing on my birthday, and what 18-soon-to-be-19-year-old does not want to see The Who on her birthday during their big farewell tour? Especially when they are one of the coolest bands out there (what? they were at that time, shut up), and Roger Daltrey is freaking hawt.  And the other is that The Who is sold out, and those are probably some pretty expensive tickets.

At this point, my friend Barbara comes meandering over, stands next to me on my left, looks down at the albums in front of her, and says to me out of the side of her mouth, “What’s going on?  Is that guy getting creepy on you?”  To which I whisper no, and fill her in.  She asks me well, how much are they, so I say to the guy, out of the other corner of my mouth, because now I know we’re dealing with scalped tickets here, and scalping is illegal – “How much?”  Then I sorta clench my teeth, try not to grimace in anticipated pain, and wait.

And he goes, “$40.”

Which was face value for the tickets.

So now I drop all pretense of sideways mouth talking and not making eye contact and turn to fully face the guy and go, “40 bucks?!?”  And he freaks and does that quick look around and moves 2 album widths down from me and hisses, “Yes!”  To which I reply, “Why are we whispering?”

At this point, he pauses for a moment, and I can see the gears turning up in his head, and he goes, “Let’s step outside.”  So we do. And I’m all, “You realize $40 is face value for the tickets, right?” And he says yes.  And I say it’s only scalping if you’re selling them for more than you paid, and he goes, “Oh.” (beat) “Do you want them?”  I look at Barbara, and she looks at me, then we both turn to the guy as one and go, “YES!”

Which is how I ended up at The Who’s farewell tour, sitting behind a column as far back as you could possibly get, freezing my ass off in the Cotton Bowl in freaking December, in a sleet storm on my birthday, while back at my house, a kegger was in full swing…but that part’s another story.  I was just thinking of this one because of the fundraising tweet I dropped on twitter tonight.  So now you know the story behind,

“Psst! Hey, kid! Yeah, you! Over there by the Van Halen records. Got any milk money you aren’t using? http://5x5printing.chipin.com/print-5×5“

:)