I'll Be Loving Them Forever

So I’m sure that many of you may want to disown me after reading this, but I can live with that because last night was one of the best nights of my life! My sister, Carolyn, came to town so that the two of us could attend the New Kids on the Block concert together. I don’t know if I’ll even be able to put into words how much fun we had or how much this meant to us. We are lifelong (well, from the age of 8) New Kids fans and loved them well beyond their heyday, after they were no longer cool, and followed each of their individual projects in and out of the spotlight for the many years before this reunion. I even went so far as to attend the “Dancing with the Stars” tour two years ago for the sole purpose of meeting Joey McIntyre (which I did!) Five years ago I had “The Right Stuff” as my cell phone ringtone and only changed it after I switched phones and no longer had the option to download that song. So I tell you all of this embarrassing information so that you will have some idea of how much of a dream come true last night was for us.

Carolyn brought our old NKOTB nightshirts with her that my mom had safely packed away for us 20 (yes, 20!) years ago. How she still had them is kind of a mystery, but fortunately we grew enough over the past 20 years that we could now wear them as shirts. At first I was slightly embarrassed, but when we went out to dinner and at the concert itself we got so many comments about our great shirts and one girl begged me to put it on Ebay for her so she could buy it. We saw some other old school shirts there, but most people were wearing the new stuff so we were pretty proud that we were so obviously original fans.

We had a great dinner downtown and then it was off to the show. We totally should have brought our cameras into the show, but our tickets had “NO CAMERAS ALLOWED” printed in bold letters on the face of the ticket so we followed the rules. We evidently could have ignored that rule because EVERYBODY had their camera. I took a few shots with my cell phone but it is not the same. But living in this technology age has its perks…there are clips on You Tube already from the concert in Charlotte I can go and watch the exact performances that I saw over and over again.

Here’s a link to a clip of Hangin’ Tough which they did as their encore (and it is totally worth checking out because they did some really cool stuff during the song): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGOoXCYcHgA

I have never been to a show with this much energy before. It really felt like they put something together to be a true treat for their fans. Everybody was on their feet for the entire show (I am not kidding!) and at one point all arms were in the air. It was the coolest feeling to look around the packed Bobcats arena and see everybody totally in the moment and singing together at the top of their lungs.

The show very obviously catered to their female fan base (which they joked are now very legal 25-35 years old since we were so young the first time around!) On the first floor of the arena every bathroom except one was a female bathroom (signs hung over the male restroom signs to turn them all into female bathrooms) due to the ratio of men to women at the show. It really was a girl’s night out! They also joked about how we all left our husbands at home for the night. It was pretty funny! You kind of had to feel bad for the husbands who somehow got dragged there.

I want to share everything that I can remember about the show right now before it fades into memory but today is Halloween and I need to get ready for all the trick or treaters. We get a bunch of kids in our neighborhood which makes it really fun. I’ll try to add more very soon because as silly as it may sound this was truly one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. My sister and I screamed, danced, and sang along at the top of our lungs, fulfilling our dream to FINALLY see NKOTB live and in concert. As great as this show was, it was totally worth a 20 year wait!