“Everything Zen” Bush #AtoZChallenge

Concerts are a unique experience. Your favorite band or singer is right there in front of you. The music is so loud it literally rattles you to the core. You leave the show feeling like you’ve been hit by a tour bus…in the best possible way.

Each show is a little different from the next, offering you a chance to learn something new about the band or even yourself; sort of like a really loud and sweaty after-school special.

Little did I know that when I offered to take my younger brother, Rick, to see the band Bush, how true that last statement would turn out to be.

I was in college and had been to exactly two concerts – Amy Grant and Cheap Trick.

My two older brothers took me to see Cheap Trick at the Cattle Congress in Waterloo when I was in high school, and while I wasn’t the band’s biggest fan, I was so amazed my brothers had picked me to go with them I jumped on the opportunity like they were offering to drive me all the way to Boston to meet The New Kids on the Block.

Now I was the one taking my younger brother to see his first concert. It was time to put on my “cool sister” hat.

(For those of you new to my blog, it might seem like I keep pulling siblings out of my bag like some sort of familial Mary Poppins. I assure you, they are all real. In fact, there are two I haven’t introduced yet.)

Our seats were in the very last row of the stadium, right up against the back wall, but Rick and I didn’t care. We were there to rock.

A couple songs into the band’s set, our row started to fill up with smoke. It smelled weird, like someone was burning both incense and mesquite.

“What’s that?” I said, looking around to see if somebody’s jacket had caught fire.

At this point in my life I didn’t have a lot of experience with pot. (Not that I do now, but at least I know it when I smell it.) Pot just wasn’t much of a thing when I was in high school. Or maybe it was, and I was just too busy listening to Amy Grant to get invited to those types of parties.

And while I was aware of the existence of pot, it was something kids did in vans or out in the woods, not at a concert! If anybody sparked up a doobie while Amy Grant was singing “Every Heartbeat” during her Heart in Motion tour, I wasn’t aware of it.

Rick elbowed me. “Shut up. Be cool.”

All I heard was “Wah-wah. Wah-wah.”

“What?” I screamed over the music.

“Shut up dummy! Those guys over there are smoking pot!”

I didn’t ask him how he knew what it was, and he didn’t offer to tell me. We just rocked out and enjoyed our contact high.

Guess I wasn’t the cool older sister I thought I was.