TJB Concert & a Chicken-Eating Chick

So we went to see The Jonas Brothers last night at Madison Square Garden.  For those of you who don’t have a pre-teen, they are the hottest sensation on the chick market these days.  Three brothers for girls to spend hours arguing about: who’s the cutest, who dresses best and every other detail ever printed in a teeny-bopper magazine (favorite color, favorite food, & recent medical history).

It’s a steroid version of the posters on my wall in 7th grade: Bobby Sherman, David Cassidy, Michael Jackson (egads) & Donny Osmond.

It was so much better than I could have expected, a concert actually worth the cash expenditure.  However, I did refuse to buy a t-shirt priced at $35 or $40 (depending on whether you were willing to pay for pink).

We would have bought tickets for a closer venue if they’d been available, but I’m so glad they weren’t.  After seeing two concerts in two weeks time & comparing the PNC Arts Center to NYC’s Madison Square Garden — forget about it.  The Garden is a screaming, writhing mass of excitement in a big dark bowl, crazy colors shining through the darkness. 

Ear plugs are a medical necessity.  Seriously.  Take it from me, an adult who has to say “What did you say?” at least 30 times a day.  I’m terrified for this generation of Ipod wearing, concert going, music loving children.  And if I hear someone say, just one more time, “Scream if you love (fill in the blank),” I will stab them with a fork.  When did shrieking become attractive?

I probably shouldn’t have, but at one point I did ask the little girl next to me “Are you going to wiggle like that all night?  Cause I’m going to lose my mind.”  She sat down, took off her shoes, grabbed her grimy feet, put them on the seat in front of her, moved to the left, moved to the right, then grabbed her feet again, sat on the edge of the seat, fell on the ground, got up & did it all again.

Two of our girls were able to sneak down & get closer to the concert stage, which made my daughter so happy she giggled & hopped up & down like our guinea pigs do when we feed them romaine lettuce.  I just wish I hadn’t followed the rules & had taken my own camera in like everyone else did.  With the amount we spent on the crappy yet approved disposable ones, she could have had a shirt.

The low point of the evening was using the bathroom in Penn Station.  It is where germs breed, the devil’s playground.  Disease is real & you can hear her laughing in the stalls.  A lot of parents in our area do not vaccinate their children.  I understand the fear, but don’t know how they can think that’s a good idea when NYC is so close & a single coughing freak can give you the gift of TB.

The trains are barely better.  We traveled both ways on New Jersey Transit.  I used to ride all the time; I don’t know if it’s me or if the trains have really gotten so much dirtier in the last 15 years.  Maybe it’s the people?  If just one more long-haired girl flipped her mop in my face or touched me with a single hair I might have finally gone over the edge.

We were provided a show for free on the way home, one that left my adult partner in crime crying with laughter & disgust & amazement. 

A woman sat down across the aisle from us & immediately the hair on our backs stood at attention.  If I had hair on my nipples I swear it would have poked straight through my shirt.

She was one of the manliest women I’ve ever seen, with a sore near her mouth & arms that had the ropy tendons of someone who lifts big rocks for a living.  Her eyes were dark at the center, rimmed with a bloody pink, & had the intensity that spells “emotional disturbance.” 

Her skin was a dusty, dirty tan.  She carried her dinner in a large bag, plus a box & numerous accoutrements.  She commenced with a picnic there on the train.

We tried not to watch.  But when she opened up container after container & began using her dirty fingers to quickly get every last atom of mashed potatoes & macaroni & cheese out of the plastic bowls, we were mesmerized & admitted defeat.  I was completely hooked when she began methodically licking them clean like a dog, twisting the bowl in a rhythmic fashion.  Once the licking commenced, I had to know if she’d do it again.  She did.

One of the few times I have truly appreciated my poor hearing was when the background noise of the train drowned out the belches that my friend and her daughter reacted to like a gun had gone off.  Unfortunately, I have a fantastic sense of smell.

She salted every item more than once, with tiny packets of Morton’s.  I wanted to warn her of the dangers of high blood pressure.  I doubt she could have really tasted the macaroni & cheese, it was so heavy with the grainy stuff.

Once the plastic containers were emptied, she poured ketchup & barbecue sauce on one of the lids, then — you guessed it — salted her condiment concoction.  To my utter delight, out came enormous fried chicken breasts.  She would rip a large hunk of meat off with her manly dirty hands, dip it in the sauce, throw her head back & enjoy.  This was a 4,000 calorie meal at minimum.

Every once in a while she would look around the train with her pink eyes.  By this time my friend had to take her glasses off because she was actually crying with disgust & amazement.  T. is a woman you’d never catch without a full pocket of anti-bacterial wipes.  We discussed moving, but the train was full & who really walks away from the scene of an accident in progress?  Surprisingly, no one asked to sit across from the diner using a second bench seat as her dinner table.  Rather than stare directly, we were able to use the train window like a mirror.

When she began clearing her nose by inserting her index finger up to the second knuckle inside her nostril, then giving it a full twist, my stomach did a complete somersault.  The same finger she was still using to rip chicken off the bone. 

When she finished with a breast she would toss it through the air onto the seat opposite her, which she had fortunately covered with a plastic bag.  There was a methodical quality to everything she did; she’d done it before.

Then suddenly it was all over.  She actually wiped the floor below her with a napkin before putting it with her garbage.  She wiped down both seats.

Once she walked away, nothing remained.  The seat looked completely normal.  I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to sit in a train seat comfortably again, imagining who might have gone before me.

Like everything else in life, there’s a decision to be made.  Do I worry more about getting a ding in my car if I park it in a garage in NYC or do I panic over the filth on a New Jersey Transit train?

Do I make my daughter happy & buy her a $40 t-shirt that will quite likely fall apart in the wash & run my husband into bankruptcy or do I say “No” & feel psycho because I’ve already spent a fortune & she still wants more?

Questions for another day . . .