Many of you who read this blog also followed this journey on Facebook, but I wanted to save it for posterity. Kyle and I went on a road trip to Charlotte, NC for an AC/DC concert on Thursday. This started several months ago when, after many years of trying to figure out what he was "into", Kyle decided he dug rock music. It has been such a joy to help him discover what he likes--Led Zeppelin, Def Leppard, Journey, Boston and the likes. But his favorite was AC/DC--the ultimate cliche in rock music, of course. And then he found out they were going to be touring. Unfortunately, the closest concert was either Charlotte or Atlanta--we chose Charlotte. (Interestingly, several weeks later, they decided to add a Tampa show, but by the time we found out the only tickets left were in the nose-bleed section almost behind the stage.) The deal was that he had to earn the money for the ticket, a t-shirt and a portion of the gas--$150. I'd let him skip school and we'd go.
He was looking forward to the concert, but I was looking forward to the road trip. He was so grateful that I was taking him, he said he'd talk to me the whole way. 16 hours with my 13 year old just talking and sharing--that is gold!
The road trip was AWESOME! 8 hours straight of AC/DC music. He set up my new iPhone and we read about AC/DC on Wikipedia on it. We learned about the history, the musicians and odd ways of dying (the old lead singer died by choking on his vomit while drunk). The night before we went to the dollar store so that on the ride we could munch on cookies and he could drink fake Mountain Dew. We made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to save money on Fast Food. He updated my Facebook page with cheesy puns of AC/DC titles. And we played the music really loudly.
After checking into the hotel (thank you Marriott points--the golden lining to all my traveling), we went out to dinner and we made a rule that--for that night only--we were not mother and son, just two people going to a concert. He told me stuff that I'd never heard (nothing dangerous, just more of a glimpse into the life of a 13 year old middle schooler). And we laughed. I let him drink Red Bull (I NEVER let him do that) and he let me try some in my beer.
And the concert--it was loud. Really loud. But the theatrics were fun, the music was decent and the staging was amazing. The concert was sold out and all the 40-something rock fans were in heaven. No one sat down the whole concert. The show was full of rock cliches--devil horns, rock trains, guitar solo tricks, video clips of babes and sexual innuendo.
Our ears were ringing after, continued ringing the whole trip home and Kyle's were still ringing today, 2 days after. But another memorable moment came on the way home when my son--after 24 hours of being an adult rocker, asked in his sweet, tired and kind voice, "Mom, I know I said I would talk to you, but do you mind if I just tune out and watch a movie?" I said fine. His choice after a hard day rocking and rolling? Disney's The Incredibles. Ahh....13 years old.
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