(I’m at a concert for a group I’m just getting into. I only know one of their songs but I’m having a great time. They take a pause, and the lead singer walks to the front of the stage.)

Singer: “When we were just getting here, we ran into a guy outside who was crying. He told us his girlfriend had just broken up with him, here. He’d been so pumped about going to a concert with his girlfriend, and once they got here, she left for good. So! Everyone in the audience! SAY, ‘THAT’S BULLS***!’”

Audience: “THAT’S BULLS***!”

Singer: “THAT’S BULLS***!”

Audience: “THAT’S BULLS***!”

(The concert proceeded as normal from that point on. To those of you who have been broken up with at events you and your partner went to together: that’s bulls***.)

(I’m a musician, with a regular gig in our city’s professional orchestra. One of the numbers on the program is a blues song, with a prominent electric organ part that my friend is playing. As we are rehearsing, the conductor stops to ask him to make a volume adjustment. It’s a totally mundane request, but unfortunately he chooses to phrase it like this:)

Conductor: “[Friend], can you bring your organ up?”

Friend: *without missing a beat* “Well, I’ll try, but at my age it might take a few minutes.”

(Several minutes of expensive rehearsal time was wasted as the whole orchestra cracked up.)

(There is a great local band here that is hired by a couple of outdoor venues several times a year. They play 50s, 60s, and 70s rock and have a very large following. At their concerts, the audience ranges from 2 to 95 and a huge percentage of the audience will get on the dance floor at some point. My daughter has some cognitive disabilities but absolutely loves rock music and dancing. She will recruit random strangers to dance if a song begins that she particularly likes. At one concert, we are sitting in the middle instead of up front. A good song comes on, my daughter hops up and grabs the hand of the elderly man sitting beside her. I try to pull her back at first but the woman sitting on the other side of the man waves me away with a smile. The gentleman obliges and they both begin to dance in the aisle. The woman scoots over to me.)

Woman: “I’ve been trying to get dad to dance all evening. Your daughter has quite a touch.”

Me: “She’s hard to say no to. He doesn’t have to dance to the whole song. I can rescue him in a minute.”

Woman: “That’s fine. He is slipping away from us. He’s always loved music so we came out tonight. He’s been enjoying himself. He’s smiling more tonight than I’ve seen in long time.”

(The song ends and the woman and I get up to collect our dancers. The man put up his hand.)

Man: “Wait. One more.”

(He took my daughter’s hand and they danced to the next song, too, both smiling ear to ear. I looked over at the woman and she was wiping away tears. That made me tear up.)

Me: “Look what you’ve started!”

Woman: “Your daughter is an angel! I can’t tell you what it means to me to see dad not only smiling but dancing.”

(Our dancers finally sat down but they held hands for most of the rest of the concert. My daughter gave her partner a hug at the end of the night and his daughter hugged me so tightly I thought I’d lose my breath. I haven’t seen them at a concert since but I always look. My daughter still grabs strangers to dance with. People hardly ever say no.)

This story is part of the Sons And Daughters roundup! This is the last story in the roundup, but we have plenty of others you might enjoy!

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My lifelong favorite band broke up when I was a bit too young to have ever had a chance to attend a concert, and they notoriously hated each other too much to reunite, so I accepted years ago that I never would get to see them play live. Amazingly, a few years ago they decide to do one short tour, and one of the stops is in my city!

Since I am at work when the tickets go on sale and my boyfriend has the day off, he offers to get the tickets. He successfully buys them and I am very excited!

A couple months later it is the month of the concert. He gets his work schedule and sees he is booked to work the day of the concert and the day after — out-of-town work, so impossible to come home for the evening. I assume he would trade shifts with someone or, worst case scenario, sell or give me his ticket. It’s THE concert of my life so of course he wouldn’t spoil it for me, right?

A couple weeks before the concert I ask to get the tickets from him since he is for-sure not getting the days off. He casually tells me that he gave the tickets away, because he couldn’t go, and they were his tickets, so why would he keep them if he couldn’t use them? No explanation of why I would not have been the first person he’d offer them to. If I’d known he considered them “his” tickets, I would have fought harder to pay him for one so I’d have rights. Or I would have snuck away during work on ticket-sales day and got my own tickets.

Dude screwed me out of seeing my favorite band, an opportunity that will never happen again, and he didn’t even apologize. In his slimy little brain he had done nothing wrong!

No, things didn’t work out between us.

(My husband and I are invited to go with a few friends to a local concert venue for a show. We’ve never been there, but we know it is a small, standing room-only venue with elevated “VIP” seating in the very back for people who wanted to pay a little more to have a chair. We’re all standing along one wall that happens to join with the VIP area, and there are three *very* drunk, 40-ish-year-old women sitting behind us.)

Drunk Woman #1: *leans down and asks one of our friends* “Are you having fun?”

Friend: “Yes, thank you!”

Drunk Woman #1: “So are we!”

Drunk Women #2 & #3: “WOO!”

(This goes on periodically throughout the show, which we don’t mind, but then Drunk Woman #3 takes a sudden liking to my husband and me. She actually got my attention by reaching down and using one of her long, fake fingernails to tap the top of my head.)

Me: *jumping* “Holy s***!”

Husband: “What’s wrong?”

Drunk Woman #3: *fingernails still very close to my face* “I just wanted to say you two are such a CUTE couple!”

Me: “Uh… thanks.”

(We try to keep watching the show, but she does this TWO MORE TIMES! I know she was just being happy-drunk-friendly, but I don’t care who you are; if you want someone’s attention don’t dig your fingernail into their scalp. It’s rude and not a place people typically like to be touched. I didn’t want to start an argument with a drunk person, so we just moved down the wall a little bit to get out of her reach. Things were going all right after that, until the finale of the show when Drunk Woman #3 starts screaming at the top of her lungs: “I LOVE YOU [MUSIC ARTIST]!!!” over and over. Thankfully, we’ve already decided to duck out a few minutes early to beat the traffic, so we leave. On the drive home, I see my husband out of the corner of my eye reaching his hand over like he’s going to tap the top of my head.)

Me: “Don’t even think about it!”

Husband: *laughs* “Come on!”

Me: “Do it, and I won’t stop at the taco truck on the way home.”

(He kept his fingernails off my head, and we had excellent tacos before heading home for the night.)