Common courtesy
Common courtesy is really not very common anymore.
I went to see Alison Krause at the Fox Theater in Atlanta on Saturday night and I was amazed by the behavior of some of the folks there.
The show lasted 90 minutes. There was one guy in front of me who left and returned to his seat four times in 90 minutes. And he was not alone. There was a constant stream of humanity going back and forth to the restroom or the concession stand. And that is over a period of 90 minutes. How can so many people find it impossible to sit down and be quite for 90 minutes?
I am approaching 50 years old. I know what the male prostate can do to a guy. I now understand what my Daddy meant when he would say, “it is either piss or get pissed on”. But my God. Do you really have to stumble up and down in front of everybody every 20 minutes just so you can piss and buy another beer? Why not wait until the show is over to drink that case of beer? Why not piss before you get to your seat and then just not drink anything else for 90 short minutes? Why is this not a good plan? If you have no control over the functions of your bladder why subject me to your weaknesses?
And then there was the guy sitting right next to me. He asked me to explain Alison Krause before the show. He was not familiar with her and was not familiar with the blue grass genre of music.
Are you kidding me? There are 5,000 people here and I get stuck sitting next to you? Jerry Douglas announces that he is going to play “Little Martha” and the crowd goes wild. Meanwhile this guy tells me that he is not familiar with the Allman Brothers and has never heard ”Little Martha”. He then lets me know that he is not all of that impressed with the dobro player. Of course that was the first time he had ever seen or heard a dobro. Maybe if the first painting you had ever seen was the Mona Lisa you would not really know how impressed you should be. I was tempted to ask the guy why he didn’t just go away and come back some day when maybe the Back Street Boys were performing again.
But I decided just to laugh at the circumstances and enjoy the music as best I could. People can drive you crazy if you let them.
Allison Krauss is awesome. Too bad about the people who go to a concert to drink copious amounts of yellow stuff. I don’t get that either. Why pay $20-80 for a ticket and then not even be in your seat?