Strange how events fall into place sometimes in a string of misfortunes, leaving us wondering why what we wanted is being denied to us. Denial makes us feel smaller, less important, more trapped by circumstance and fate, and less able to move and enact the things we want for ourselves.
It was a string of things, nothing very important, that piled on this weekend to make a person feel small. We had plans--dinner and a concert, Fleetwood Mac, for crying out loud. I watched a documentary on the group as I spent some time on the treadmill, and got a little work done before heading off to Sioux Falls to enjoy dinner before the concert. We had reservations, which we knew was important because we'd been to the packed Crooked Pint once before another concert, and there was no way we'd get in early enough to eat and get to the concert.
But the reservation was a bust. We got there before our reservation time, but they told us they'd given our table away. "We just got busy," she said. Yup, just like before every other big concert. So we stood for half an hour or more waiting for a table. Their offer? A free appetizer. Poutine is good, but not that good.
Fine, plenty of time. So then we head over to the Sanford Arena and got in with 20 minutes to spare. Except we had to stand in line for 45 minutes, and by the time we got to security the concert had already been going on for 20 minutes. We could hear it, muffled through the walls and the floor, "Rhiannon," for one. Finally, through security and on to the scans, where our tickets from StubHub would finally get us in, even though, by that time, we were getting a little annoyed.
But the scanner bleeped a big red X, and the worker told us to go to the ticket office. Another denial!
At the box office, the woman there told me the same ticket had been scanned two hours before. So there was that, a ripoff ticket from StubHub. The woman offered me a ticket--there were tickets available--but the prospect of dropping another hundred bucks per ticket when the hundreds I'd already spent had just gone up in smoke, that didn't appeal to me.
So we paused, had a seat, listened to another muffled song from that great band, and decided to mitigate our disappointment by having a beer. It seemed only fitting that as we pulled up at Castaway's, across the street, the last few letters were dim, so we walked in under the Castaw and tried to spin ourselves back up from our denials.
Today I reminded myself, as I cheered for the Rams to prevail over the Patriots in Super Bowl LIII (53 for you non-Romans), that disappointment is often self-inflicted. It didn't really matter who won the game. It didn't kill us to stand and chat while the folks at Crooked Pint tried to find us a table. We've got the Fleetwood Mac albums at home.
And StubHub is refunding what we spent on the tickets, with a discount on our next purchase.
We had a fun drive down to Sioux Falls chatting with our friend, a nice meal, a chance to see some great music, and a safe drive home again.
And that Super Bowl? We got to watch, cheer, chat, eat, and share the night with some good people. Life is good.
