A Tall Tale

This week's "Ticked Off Topic" is dedicated to all the vertically challenged folks out there. I do not necessarily think of myself as being short. I am about 5'3-ish. When buying pants, this means that "Petite" sizes are too short after one wash, but regular sizes still have to be hemmed about 5". When attending concerts, it means tall people gravitate to the space directly in front of me. Always.

A few weeks ago, we went to Denver for Elizabeth's Big Birthday Roadtrip. While there, we went to see Rain: A Beatle's Tribute at the performing arts center. The production was amazing. The venue was amazing. Except for one thing~the Freakishly Tall Man sitting right in front of me. Even though he was one row/level/step below me, he was still taller than me and so I spent the entire evening leaning on Paige so I could see around the Jolly Green Giant.

This past weekend, BigJoel scored us some tickets to see Family Force 5 at the House of Blues. (In case you didn't know, the House of Blues is, for all intents and purposes, a bar. And I took my 14 and 9 year old daughters. I might just be Mom of the Year. But I digress...) Anyway, it was "general admission standing room only", which really means "short people need not bother". At first we had a pretty good view, but then the Daughter of the Freakishly Tall Man from Denver arrived and pushed her way in front of us. Here is a picture from Elizabeth's camera of the back of tall girl's head. Did I mention that she parked herself di-rect-ly in front of me? Notice how she stands "head and shoulders" above the rest of the crowd. The good news is, she was only there for the opening bands and left before FF5 took the stage.

Having an obstructed view at a general admission show where you got the tickets for free is one thing. But now let me tell you about the long-awaited U2 concert at the new Cowboys Stadium. We did not get these tickets for free, but our seats were reasonably good. The opening band, Muse, was much better than I had expected and I got lots of great pictures. When U2 took the stage, naturally everyone was on their feet cheering and waving and singing along. The couple in front of us were especially excited. They kept jumping up and down hugging each other. It reminded me of contestants on The Price is Right. After the first few songs, people started to relax a bit and sit down. (Thank goodness) But not the happy couple in front of me...nooooooo...now they had linked arms and were swaying back and forth like they were singing drinking songs in an Irish pub. Eventually, every person in our entire section sat down to enjoy the show. Every person except~you guessed it~the pair right, directly, exactly in front of me. Here's my view:

Only it was worse, because they weren't just standing there. They were either jumping up and down or swaying back and forth...the whole time...the entire time. And do you know that U2 does an amazing show that lasts almost two hours? That's right. Two hours. Behind these people. Come to think of it, the problem wasn't that they were tall. The problem is that they were rude. I understand they paid good money for their seats. But SEATS is the operative word here...which implies that one SITS. They could have paid a lot less money for standing room on the floor, but instead my "rights" to a comfortable chair took a back seat to their rights to "act a fool". They never once stopped jumping or swaying to look around and see that everyone else was seated, and yet still enjoying the concert just as much. Except for me...because all I could see was them...NOT the ground-breaking, multi-million dollar production by one of the greatest bands of all time.

So I started out blasting tall people, which really isn't fair. Tall people can't help being tall any more than I can help being 5'3-ish. The real culprits here are inconsiderate people. Yet, in my experience, most inconsiderate people seem to be pretty tall as well. I'm just sayin'...