One of my daughter’s friends stopped by last week and we excitedly told him we had tickets to the CSNY concert. 

He said, “Who?”

“Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.  You know … David Crosby, Neil Young …”

He repeated, “Who?”

My husband took him out to the car and popped in a CD because we were sure he would recognize the music.  Wrong.  He just sat there and stared blankly at the CD player.  We were crushed to realize that there are people alive to whom those names don’t mean a thing.  With the resurgence of 70’s stuff … music, clothes, attitudes … how could it be that this young man had never heard of CSNY?

We arrived at the concert with butterflies in our stomachs, memories of thirty (omigosh, could it really be thirty?!) years ago making us feel so young.

Neil Young was awesome, but when he did his get-down-head-banging guitar playing, well, you could see his bald spot just plain as day.  And David Crosby looked like Santa Claus. 

This is not something a rock ‘n roll musician likes to hear.  But we cheered and clapped and tapped out feet because they were great … and we all looked just like ‘em.

As we scanned the crowd, we couldn’t help but laugh … at the people, and at ourselves.  There was a sprinkling of hippies in the crowd, but these hippies had gray hair and bellies.  We saw a lot of bald heads.  Skin-tight clothes were the exception rather than the rule.  Only saw one tattoo.  Most of the women only had one earring in each ear.

A lady two rows in front of us couldn’t rein in her enthusiasm, stood up, and started dancing with wild abandon.  Everyone around her tsk-tsked.  Thirty years ago EVERYBODY was dancing.

The conversations we would catch bits and pieces of involved stock tips instead of drugs.  Many of us were carrying cell phones to check up on our teenagers during the breaks.  How ironic that the last time we saw CSNY, our parents were constantly checking up on us.  And what a pain we thought they were. 

When they played past 10:30, people started looking at their watches as if to say, “It’s gettin’ to be my bedtime.”

What I’m trying to tell you fellow baby-boomers is that we have gotten, well, old.  Just about everyone had a belly of sorts, but I’m not saying that’s bad.  It’s hard to put into words, but the looks on their faces said even more … that they were content.  Comfortable with life.  Glad to be here.

As the lights went down, my husband and I melted comfortably into our comfortable seats, dressed in our comfortable clothes, with comfortable looks on our faces, holding hands comfortably, and enjoyed this wonderfully comfortable evening with some of the best music in the world.  We were comfortably content.

And I’m proud to say we stayed up WAY past our bedtime.