The first clue that my stable footing as a lifelong music fan was suddenly precarious came when a bouncer at a Vampire Weekend concert called me a cougar. The second was when, seeing my shocked reaction, the same bouncer said, “Oh, man, I totally misunderstood. You’re just here to drop off your kids!”

That night, I’d gotten ready as I’ve prepared for every concert I’ve seen in the past thirty years. With the band’s music playing so I could brush up on obscure lyrics, I put in my contacts and carefully applied my makeup, trickier now that I’m getting the farsightedness of aging. I pulled on a pair of jeans and boots and began tucking things into my pockets – money, tickets, lip gloss, ID (no longer fake, and very rarely requested) – I like to go hands free in case dancing breaks out.  I threw on a dark shirt to camouflage splattered beer. Just like always.

In fact, the only thing that had changed about my concert-going routine was that it wasn’t a young woman undertaking it, but rather a forty-five year old mom of two, married almost twenty years, looking forward to a girl’s night out with my friend Andrea. But as when I was 17 and turned away from 18-and-older shows, the gap between my age and that of the median concertgoer was the only thing that mattered.

The bouncer caught up to Andrea and I as we snuck down to the cheap seats for a look at the venue’s newly restored Arabian Nights gilded statuary from eye level. “Ladies! Busted! You’re not sitting in this section, are you?” he said, the black t-shirt on which SECURITY was spelled out straining across his barrel chest. Young men and women wearing skinny jeans and knit caps stepped around us like we were concrete pylons, and paid us a commensurate amount of attention.

I immediately confessed and assured him that we were only taking a quick peek at the restoration work before heading back to our more expensive seats in the loge.

That’s when he said it. “Good thing! Thought I was going to have to go on a cougar hunt there!” And then, by way of apology, he guessed  I was there as chauffeur for someone young enough to appreciate good music.

It dawned on me then that I’d hit the age at which I’m supposed to age gracefully into the background, to stop taking up space at concerts and record stores, just because I remember acid wash jeans and cowl neck sweaters from the first time around.

The arrival of this day had, I suppose, been inevitable.

When I was in my mid-twenties I lived in Washington, DC and worked in an office with a man named Sam, the head of our Information Technology division, who was approaching 50. Sam had a broad Slavic face, an unholy affinity for Obsession by Calvin Klein, and a disconcerting habit of answering any question posed to him with a heavy, disappointed sigh and the phrase, “It’s really very complicated.” It was the perfect way of making people feel small and at the same time avoiding work that Sam didn’t personally feel was worthwhile.

But Sam liked me, and that was due to a shared appreciation of good music. The first thing I’d do on Monday morning was grab a coffee and go perch in Sam’s office to compare notes on what concerts we’d seen–Me’Shell Ndegéocello at a street festival near the National Mall, Poi Dog Pondering at the 9:30 Club–or albums we’d purchased over the weekend.

I grew genuinely fond of Sam over the three years we worked together. In fact, I still say “It’s really very complicated” to get out of requests I consider frivolous.  But something about him troubled me. How come he didn’t know he was too old to go to these shows or stay so well-informed about grunge and hip-hop? It just didn’t seem dignified to be approaching the mid-century mark and to still be so plugged into the emerging music scene.

Not me, I would think to myself, I’ll know when I’m too old. Maybe a life clock crystal will appear in the center of my left palm and start flashing red when it’s time, like that 70’s movie Logan’s Run. Even as I passed 30, then 35, then 40, I presumed there would be some tangible sign indicating to me that I had reached the end of my shelf life for going to concerts and buying albums and researching new bands.

Evidently that sign was a bouncer in a black t-shirt at a Vampire Weekend show.

When Andrea and I climbed back up to our pricey seats in the loge, I willed myself to maintain a stillness that seemed age appropriate. The band plunged into their signature stew of reggae, ska, calypso and Afropop, criss-crossing the stage with staccato moves and practically playing the gilded paint off the walls. My attention was momentarily riveted by the extremely young couple in front of us, who were nestled so closely that his tongue was coming out of her ear. They couldn’t have been more than fourteen.

I nudged my friend and said, “Oh my god! Look at what she is wearing! I would hobble my child if she tried to get out of the house like that!” Meanwhile Andrea, mother of two, jabbed me back and said, “It’s a school night! What the hell were their parents thinking!”

But after awhile, around the time when the band broke out with “Run,” I found my shoulders rising up and down to the beat all on their own. By “Mansard Roof” I was singing along – and by the looks of it, other fans hadn’t put quite the study and care into memorizing lyrics about architectural features that I did. By the time “Blake’s Got a New Face” came on, Andrea and I were dancing in the side aisle while younger people sat around us like cutouts in a Hollywood crowd scene.

I felt sorry for the kids sitting near us, and made a note to find Sam on Facebook so I could ask what concerts he’d seen lately.

If Vampire Weekend doesn’t propel you out of your seat at age 20, it probably never will. And if it does, then why would you ever sit down?

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