Damaged Hearing
I saw aha up close and in person
I don’t hear well. I always tell people it is because I damaged my hearing by listening to rock n roll music too loudly when I was a teenager. Hubby thinks that is what did it. It is more likely that I just have some sort of genetic something or another that has meant my hearing has decreased over the years. But I did listen to music too loud.
I shared this with someone earlier today and found myself reminiscing about the aha concert that Hubby and I went to. My older sister went too. We couldn’t go alone. She had to accompany us on outings all the time. She was our chaperone.
At the last minute, another friend decided to go to the concert with us so when we arrived at the venue, we went to the ticket office to check if we could exchange our three seats to add one more and have four together. According to Google, the aha World Tour was in 1986, so I would have been 14 years old. Definitely too young to go on a date without a chaperone!
You need to know how old I was because you need to try to get yourself into the mindset of a 14 year old girl about to see aha live in concert. We stood at the ticket desk. We had already decided as a group that it was better to have four seats together even if they were further back than the three we had previously purchased. I will never forget that sweet, beautiful woman behind the counter. She looked up at us and said,
“Well, the only four seats I still have together are on the front row.
Will that be okay?”
OH MY GOODNESS! Are you freakin’ kidding me? Hubby smiled and told me not to faint.
We traded in our seats that were halfway back for the front row tickets she had.
“Take on me. Take me on.”
They were so cute! And, I was standing ON TOP of the seat, one foot on each armrest, singing along with them at the top of my lungs. All the while, the most enormous speaker you’ve ever seen was about 8 feet from my head. It never occured to me that it might do permanent damage. And, as I said, I’m not sure it did. But, Hubby does think that is why he has tinnitus to this day.
Hubby is a little older than me, but he was also a teenager. The ONLY reason he was at that concert is because he was in looooovvvvvvvveeeeeee with me. He did not stand on the armrests of his seat, but he did lean an elbow on one. I was dancing, singing, and loving every minute of it,
“So needless to say
I’m odds and ends
I’ll be stumbling away
Slowly learning that life is OK
Say after me
It’s no better to be safe than sorryTake on me, (take on me)
Take me on, (take on me)
I’ll be gone
In a day or two”
I looked down at my boyfriend, Hubby. I wanted to share this beautiful moment with him. He had bought the tickets for us. It was such a wonderful gift. I couldn’t believe it. I knew he wasn’t standing on the seat like I was. I knew he wasn’t standing at all. Somehow in the midst of an aha concert, he had remained seated. When I looked down to make eye contact with him, to share this moment and let him see how happy I was, he was ASLEEP.
We were RIGHT NEXT to the enormous speakers in the FRONT ROW of an AHA concert and he was sleeping through it!
I just went back to singing along with Morten, Magne, and Pål.
Take on me,
Take me on.
