Let me start this out by saying I haven’t missed a Jonas Brothers concert since 2008. When I was 13 years old, my mom convinced me to see them at Madison Square Garden. I wasn’t a huge fan or anything, she had a feeling that they would get big and I would regret not going. Well… she was right. After we purchased tickets, I fell for the Jonas Brothers, hard.
I’d love to say that I outgrew that phase completely, but I can’t. 13 years later, I saw the Jonas Brothers with my mom at Jones Beach last week. Seeing them as an adult is a whole different ball game, mainly because you have adult money to spend on adult things – like front row tickets. But you also have adult responsibilities that make spending hundreds of dollars on front row tickets seem frivolous. Especially when there’s still a global pandemic going on, and the price of tickets also comes with the risk of getting sick.
I had an internal struggle deciding if I wanted to go to the concert enough to risk getting COVID again. Yes, again. I caught COVID in November of 2020 and have yet to regain my sense of smell and only partially have my taste. Although I am young and healthy, COVID really kicked my butt. I am still suffering effects 11 months later so I was very hesitant to go into a crowd of 15,000 people again. But, after many flip-flopped decisions, my mom and I finally decided to pull the trigger on tickets …7 hours before the show started. I guess you could say we were very undecided until the 11th hour.
I stumbled upon an opportunity to buy first row tickets at a low price, due to the owner catching COVID and not being able to attend the show. As scary as it was, I decided to go for it and get back out into the world of events, concerts and crowds. My mom and I put on our masks and brave faces and marched right into the eye of the storm. The most people we’ve been around in the past 18 months has been a semi-crowded restaurant or a half-crowded mall… not thousands of girls (and guys) without masks excitedly laughing, chatting and singing. So, it was safe to say we were nervous, but as time passed – the nerves began to settle down. I ran into some old friends, caught up with them, settled into our seats and waited for the lights to go down.
Although it may have been risky and a bit unnerving for me, I was super excited to get back out there and see my favorite band again. These seats were the closest I’ve ever been and completely forgot about my nerves the minute the lights went down, and they came on stage. It was so fun to relax, sing and dance with my mom again as we did so many other concerts before. Although it may have been a risk to expose myself to so many fans, it was great to forget and disconnect for 2 hours while you watch your favorite band have a good time just a few feet in front of you. During those two hours it was like the pandemic never happened and the world was never flipped on its head.
This concert made me hopeful and look forward to the days when infection rates are at an all-time low and vaccination rates an all-time high, where we can laugh and sing and dance and not worry about getting sick. This may be the new normal, but at least some things like your favorite concerts are beginning to feel normal again. It’s been over a week since the concert and neither of us have had any symptoms, so we thankfully avoided getting sick in a group of 15,000 people and enjoyed an awesome concert from the front row.