that one time we saw hanson and it was amazing

i have been a hanson fan for a very long time. back in 1997, i kept hearing this catchy song, and then the djs would talk about these three brothers with long blond hair from oklahoma. i had to get in on that action, and eventually i was a full-fledged fanson. i got their first album, middle of nowhere, for christmas. i got their tour video for my birthday. i collected posters from j-14 and tiger beat and hung
them up in my room. i tracked their television appearances, from snl to good morning america to sabrina the teenage witch. and i've loved them ever since. i have every album, including their brilliant christmas offering, snowed in, and i've still never gotten
to see them live.

when i was younger, it was never really an option. they were pretty huge at one point, and we weren't really a concert-going family. then, though i was still a fan listening to the music they put out every couple years, i wasn't thinking about going to a show and being able to actually see these guys that i had loved for so long. i mean, as a boy-crazy preteen, i stayed up late in my room pretending i was a recently added member of hanson--asked to join because they were missing a beautiful dancer to spruce up their live performances. and also obviously zac was in love with me.


all of this is leading to the fact that, after 16 years of devotion, i finally got to see hanson live. i still a little bit can't believe that it actually happened, but my sisters and i bought tickets, went on the walk, and saw a hanson show--on berg's birthday, of all things! i could write so much about the details--how almost everyone in the audience was a female in her mid- to late-twenties or early-thirties (except for those random older people that creeped us out), how we met a hanson fan from slovakia, also a
first-time concert-goer, how i couldn't hear the next day, how everyone sang along to every song. it was seriously a dream come true for me, and i know how silly that sounds. after so many daydreams, i was a tiny bit sad that all of them are married and therefore not looking in the audience for a potential mate, which was always the way i envisioned getting into the inner circle, but i got over it ;)

in a word, it was great. amazing, even. nay, fantastic. no, more: exceptional. i might go so far as to say it was the greatest concert i've been to, and i saw taylor swift from the pit. for me, this concert was perfect. and i would go again in a second. thanks for going with me, sisters! thanks for being born, berg! and thanks, hanson, for still being my favorite band of all time. fanson forever.

we "took the walk"--we met up with zac and taylor a few hours before the show and walked a mile around salt lake barefoot. they do this before every show--they donate a dollar for every person who walks. and this is how close i got to zac. close enough to give him a little pat on the butt, if i had wanted.

it feels like a perfect night to hang out with taylor aka the coolest thing to ever happen to us

when we first heard that taylor was coming to salt lake again, we knew that, as with her two previous tours, we needed to go. we got online at the appointed time...and could not get tickets. it was pretty devastating. the concert sold out in like less than a minute, so it felt like we didn't even have a chance. and we said, well, it will be fine if we don't get to go.

after christmas, nana gave each of us a generous gift and told us to spend it on something meaningful, not just food or clothes or something temporary. cut to one of my greatest ideas: we could put that money toward tickets for the concert, which were on sale for outrageous prices online. so eventually we found three tickets together and we were going.

fast forward five months. for the past few weeks, we've been diligently looking up ways to meet taylor, watching videos, listening to the set list, planning our outfits, making posters, and reading all about her and this tour.

finally, the day came. june 1st. we got to the arena way early, in an attempt to catch the attention of someone who might see how awesome we are and let us go to club red, where you get to meet taylor after the concert.

us in front of one of the probably 30 semis/buses lining the block next to the arena.

nothing happened while we walked around for 2 and a half hours before the doors opened except that we saw other fans, though none who were quite as cute as we were. when we finally got in, we went straight to the t-shirt counter--the biggest mistake we made at the fearless tour concert was not getting a sweet tour shirt, and we will never make that error again. then we went up to our seats, which ended up being even deeper in the nosebleeds than we originally thought. but, we were happy to be there, so we settled in, singing and dancing and waving our posters anyway.

a little before 7, the first opener, joel crouse, started his set. he was pretty good, even though we didn't know any of his music. next was ed sheeran, which i was excited about. for whatever reason, we were the only ones in our section standing up and dancing and just basically looking like we were having fun. after ed played "lego house," we were waiting for the next song, and meredith said, look, there's taylor's mom! i looked, and, yeah, there she was a the bottom of our section inside the portal. (we knew all about mama swift from all of our research--she walks around the venue looking for people to bring down to the floor. so it was a big deal to see her.) i yelled, ANDREA! to get her attention, but at the same moment we realized that there was a woman at the end of our row telling us to grab our stuff and come with her.

it happened just the way we had heard it would--we ran down the stairs and there was taylor swift's mom, asking if we wanted to get a little closer. so we were in shock for the next ten minutes as she gathered a few more devoted fans with stinky seats to take down to the pit.

apparently i didn't get the memo that we were doing cute faces, not excited faces.

i still can't believe this happened. and don't we look like we could be part of the family?

 the whole thing was so surreal. we got our wristbands, took a picture with mama swift, and went backstage to get to the pit. ed sheeran was finishing his set, and we were so close to him--i might have shed my first tears at that point.

the rest of the concert passed by in a blur. we were within arm's reach of taylor herself for much of the concert, which was amazing in its own right. but it was made even better by the fact the we had been chosen out of the audience, out of the nosebleeds, by taylor swift's mom. not a ton of people can say that. and it was all because we were dancing and having fun. and maybe also because of a lot of prayer. and also because of nana.

in the pit

that bright white spot behind us is taylor, and once again i ruined the cuteness of the picture.

yeah, she was that close.

bah, looking at these brings it all back again. it was so amazing! sadly, we didn't get to touch her or meet her, but our experience was the next best thing. some things about the pit, though:

1. we were still pretty much the only ones dancing, and some people didn't even know all the words, which was really weird to me. 
2. being so close, you want to document it. but having the camera or the phone in front of your face kind of takes away from the actual lived experience. so we decided fairly early on that we weren't going to try to document everything. 
3. down in the pit we often had a really great view of her back. and often, if we were looking at taylor upstage, we were missing what was happening downstage with the band and dancers and stage. so we weren't always getting the full effect. but, small price to pay for some of the best seats in the house.
4. we were standing the whole time, and it was blazing hot down there. but that probably would have been pretty much the same whether we were sitting up in the rafters or not.

all in all, even with some drawbacks, the show was incredible and we had a once-in-a-lifetime experience. we were up close and personal with taylor, her band, and her dancers, and we met her mom. it was a perfect night!