My kids grew up in the burbs of Harrisburg. With Hershey just a few miles away, they have been fortunate to see quite a few concerts over the years.
Normally I am oblivious over who is performing in the Land of Chocolate. Several years ago, One Direction was in town. Now, I know NOTHING about the group except that one of them had dated Taylor Swift (but then again, who hasn’t?).
My wife and I, who apparently were living under a rock at the time, didn’t actually realize what a big deal this was so we decided to go shopping at the outlets in Hershey the afternoon of the concert. Big mistake! There must have been three million screaming girls in town.
I had had enough of the craziness so we headed home as soon as possible. But it did bring back a memory of when my daughter went to a Jonas Brothers concert about five years earlier.
The “Jo-Bros” where the Beatles of their time. Personally I thought they had whiny voices but hey, Grace loved them. Her room was full of posters and she knew every single song by heart.
The concert was in Hershey and of course every teen and pre-teen girl within 300 miles made the pilgrimage to worship them. Pretty much they could only see them because the deafening screams covered up any sounds that were actually coming from the stage.
The centerpiece of the pre-show festivities was a bus. That’s right, a bus. But it was a special bus where fans were encourage to write message on it for their beloved Jo-Bros. I was not at the concert that night since my wife drew the short straw. She was talking with other mothers when Grace and her friends converged on the bus.
Later Grace couldn’t stop talking about the bus. I asked her what she wrote on it. The response was classic.
She said, “I wrote GRACE COCHRAN” and then she recited our phone number!
After I picked up my jaw, I asked her again what she said. She knew she went too far and said, “I wrote GRACE COCHRAN.” I asked her about the second part and she replied very softy that she wrote our phone number too. So my daughter had put her name and phone number into the world for any weirdo to see. Great.
You can imagine how the conversation went after that. There were several concerts after that but Grace had learned her lesson and is now very guarded about giving out any information.
So maybe, just maybe, the Jonas Brothers helped me teach her a lesson about privacy.
