I’ll never forget it. Seven hours in the pouring rain, surrounded by at least a thousand people, in what would become home to me every summer for my entire high school career. All to see one boy. One boy who had lived in my computer screen for two years now. One boy who had once told me he loved me over a short 30-second phone call to my favorite radio station.
Yes, I’m talking about the one, the only, Justin Drew Bieber. Born 12:56 a.m. on a Tuesday in St. Jude’s Hospital in Stratford, Ontario, Canada. Don’t ask me how or why I know that.
This would be the first time I ever saw him live in front of my eyes. I was only 13 years old. I had begged my mom to let me go to Six Flags Great Adventure with my childhood best friend, Tiffany, to see the boy I had been obsessing over for two years now. At first, my mother insisted it was a ridiculous thing to do. But after I moaned at her for a few hours, she agreed to let me go.
The morning of the concert, I went to a physical therapy appointment with my mom. It was pouring. She was yelling that I couldn’t go because of the downpour. It was almost flooding the streets. But I cried so hard that she couldn’t say no.
When we got to the park, we had to wait on line for a couple hours. We stood there, my favorite converse sneakers soaked. My hair was an absolute mess, and I probably looked like I just survived a tsunami. But I didn’t care.
When they opened those gates, my heart started racing, as did my prepubescent legs as they sprinted through the crowd, desperate to get as close as possible. Once we planted our spot, that was it. There was no moving out of this crowd, or we would lose our spot.
“I have to pee,” I remember whispering to my friend. “You can’t!” She stressed to me just how much I needed to stay in the same spot that I was right then. And eventually, she talked me into just peeing. Right there. In my shorts, in the pouring rain, at my very first Justin Bieber concert. I could not have been more internally embarrassed. Of course, nobody noticed. We were all touching shoulders in the pouring rain, nobody was going to know I peed. Regardless, it wasn’t my proudest moment.
A couple bands came on before Justin, bands I didn’t really care about. They refused to tell us the set list, so we had to stand there for an hour listening to music we didn’t like.
And then it happened. They announced his name. And I felt my heart pump faster than it ever had, and my eyes immediately filled with tears. I felt my throat thicken and my ears started buzzing. I was almost suffocated with excitement.
He bounced to the middle of the stage, singing the words to his first single, "One Time." His shaggy hair was perfectly flipped to the left side. The cut on his cheek where he had an incident with a tree branch was right there, visible, captured by my eyes. I couldn’t help but let out a blood-curdling scream, unheard by the other many screaming girls.
At one point, he made a heart with his hands and put it up in the air. He walked over to my side of the stage. It was about to happen, and I knew it. The first time we would ever make eye contact. He looked at me with huge brown orbs and I felt myself melt. He pointed at me, but I was too stunned to listen to the words his perfect voice was singing.
And just as quickly as it had begun, it had ended. He threw a peace sign up in the air and left the stage. That’s when the post-Justin depression set in - something I would become very used to in the near future. The moment he was out of my sight, I was upset. “That’s it?” I remember asking myself. It had been the best half hour of my life, but in reality, it was only a half hour.
We made our way out of the gates, standing near the back entrance of the stage. “You can’t wait here,” a security guard stated (a statement I would soon get used to hearing), but we ignored him, waiting for 15 minutes. We met a few other girls, one of which had damaged their phone during the show. That was the first time I realized that Justin’s fans would really do anything just to get a glimpse of him. Little did I know, I was going to become a very big part of that family.
Unfortunately, Tiffany’s father decided it was time to leave, and that was it. It was over. I was depressed for weeks afterwards, replaying the show in my head, dreaming of it every night.
It’s one of my favorite memories. I went on to see him 30-plus times and even meet him a couple times. He is a huge part of my life and I don’t regret a single moment of it.
So, thanks, Justin. For the memories that passed and the memories to come.
