ALL I WANTED WAS TO SEE PAUL MCCARTNEY

You have to understand two things about me.

Number one, I am a huge fan of the Green Bay Packers.  I’m a shareholder of the team.  I live and die with their games each weekend.

Number two, Paul McCartney is my personal hero.  From the time I was 13 years old, watching the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show on our one little black and white TV, I have idolized Paul.  He was the reason I saved up my allowance and bought a guitar and taught myself to play, the reason I joined a little garage band in high school, the reason I questioned my faith in God because he didn’t make me left-handed like Paul so I could play the bass guitar like him, plucking the strings with his index and middle fingers while gently rocking up and down on the balls of his feet, cocking his head from side to side as he sang.  You get the idea.

So the other day when I received an email headlined “Paul McCartney to play at Lambeau Field”, it was the perfect convergence of circumstance.  A chance to see my favorite artist at my favorite place.  When Sharon told me she’d also like to see him in concert, I circled the date on my calendar when tickets went on sale via the internet.  Little did I know the adventure that awaited.

The day finally  arrived.  I breathlessly punched to the website where I encountered a digital countdown clock informing me tickets were going on sale to the public in 15 minutes 46 seconds…45 seconds…44…..43.  My fingers perched on the laptop keyboard waiting for zero hour.  Five seconds…4…3…2…1…………a message pops up saying “Tickets to the Paul McCartney concert at Lambeau Field are now on sale.”  Below it was a button reading “Get In Line”.  I mashed the button with my heart pounding!

In large letters another message comes up saying “Please wait.  There are more than 2,000 people ahead of you.”  How that many people got in front of me in the course of about three seconds I’ll never know.  Below that was a little animated stick man walking across a time bar.   Apparently this was meant to give me an idea of how long the wait would be.  The stick man’s legs were constantly moving, but he wasn’t making much progress across the time line.  I watched him for about 15 minutes, imagining it was Paul McCartney himself walking over to greet me.

Alas, even someone as easily entertained as me grows bored at this.  It was evident I had some time before my turn came up.  Time to do the dishes, put in a load of laundry, watch a few TV shows, go out for lunch, take a correspondence course, cruise the Bahamas, etc.

When the stick man was about two thirds of the way across the time line a message popped up saying “Due to high demand ticket availability is extremely limited.”  I’m not exactly sure what they were trying to tell me, other than I will never get these past few hours of my life back.  Finally, the stick man made it to the end of the time bar.  We had become very close friends by this time.  I was sad to see him disappear.  In his place was the seating chart for the stadium lit up in different colors indicating where there were still seats available.  I was delighted to see quality seats remaining all over the facility.

But I am now convinced that whoever designs the color scheme for these displays is a sadistic monster……because  I would spend the next hour frantically clicking on one pair of seats after another, only to be told that “another customer has beaten you to those tickets.  Please try again”.  At one point, I actually did get through!  The system took me to the payment page, where I was informed the cost of my two tickets totaled $1,785.00!  Either I had somehow ordered the entire front row, or I had gotten seats in Paul’s dressing room.  In any event, I love Paul….but not that much!  And that’s when I made the fatal mistake of my life.

Yes, I did it.  I declined the tickets and clicked on “Return To Seating Chart”.  Sigh……I would never get to the payment page again.  Eventually the system must have felt sorry for me and wanted to put me out of my misery, because I started getting a message saying “We’re sorry, but we can’t process your request at this time”.

It took awhile but I’m over it now.  Farewell Paul.  I will continue to admire you from afar.  For what it’s worth, I forgive you.  Now, do you think you could get me the email address of that stick man?