When it comes to the end of a school year, every student has mixed thoughts. Some are happy, some are sad, and some are just downright stressed. This is an example of my thoughts over the course of a few days.
My original plan for the weekend was to go to Hershey, Pennsylvania with my parents and brother because my brother had a baseball tournament. I really wanted to go to Hershey Park because I haven’t been there since I was 10 and my mom wanted to go to Gettysburg. In the end, however, I stayed behind because I had volunteering on Monday afternoon that I didn’t want to miss and my family wasn’t going to get back until Monday night. Oh it’s fine, I thought when I realized I was being abandoned for the weekend. I’ll find other things to do.
I decided that spending a day down the shore by my grandfather’s house would be nice and asked my friend Jeremy if he wanted to come with me the next day. He said yes, and then we asked our friend Brian to come along too. Our plan was to leave at 8 the next morning and come home sometime in the afternoon or early evening.
Even though I planned on getting up early to get ready I could not fall asleep and started pacing around my house. Sometime around midnight I got a text from my friend Sara. She asked if I wanted to do something really spontaneous. She and our friends Jen and Jess were planning on seeing Justin Bieber the next day in Newark but they didn’t have tickets yet and she wanted to know if I wanted to join them. Did I? I would be lying if I said I was the world’s biggest Justin Bieber fan, but I like a fair amount of his songs and I love concerts. I knew that we would have a blast, so I obviously responded with a “yes!”.
About 6 and a half hours, give or take, later, I was up and getting ready for the beach. I got my things together, took a shower, fed my dog and waited for the boys to show up. They came a little after eight and we were on our way. Along the way Jeremy and Brian fought over the radio stations, we had to stop so Brian could pee and Jeremy made us drive down a 25 mph street for longer than was necessary because it was the street his own shore house was on, but eventually we made it and went up to the beach. It was so cloudy out that we basically had the whole beach to ourselves. A cloudy beach day is not necessarily a bad beach day, though, and the three of us had a great time. We went for a walk, took some fun beachy pics and played volleyball before heading back to eat lunch. Shortly after lunch we headed back home. Brian and Jeremy continued to fight over the radio stations and Brian’s portable charger. I also went the wrong way at one point which caused a five minute detour (if you know me well enough that is not surprising information), but, once again, we made it back to find Sara and Jen in my driveway (the poor girls were probably in my driveway for more than an hour. Sorry guys!).
After my friends briefly met each other and got a look at my (messy) room, the boys went on their way and Sara, Jen and I got ready for the Biebs. After some outfit try ons and putting on of make-up, we went off to the concert. There was just one problem. We still didn’t have tickets.
We were almost to the Prudential Center, where the concert was taking place, when the tickets were finally purchased. We found $15 parking a few blocks away and found our friend Jess, who had flown in from Seattle. We had to walk through a fancy hallway to print out or tickets since they were on Sara’s phone. The hallway wasn’t actually fancy but it made you feel like you were going backstage.
Two of our tickets were for one section facing the front of the stage while the other two were on the side of the stage. Jess and I took the tickets for the front and Sara and Jen took the tickets for the side. We agreed to switch seats halfway through the concert.
Some dude named Post Malone opened for Biebs. I knew one of his songs (apparently it’s called White Iverson) and Jess didn’t know any of them. He wasn’t bad at all, though.
Bieber made his grand entrance in a giant box in a very interesting choice of wardrobe. Ahhh!! This was my eighth concert, and six out of the eight I’ve been to have been country concerts, so Bieber’s performance was a whole new experience. The backup dancers were incredible, the lights were perfect, Justin did a backflip and a DJ was in charge of the music, except for when Bieber pulled out his guitar and played on a couch. We were all so drawn into the concert that it was more than halfway through when we switched seats.
When Jess and I got to our new seats, we saw that we were so far off to the side that there weren’t any people to the right of us. We were, however, so close to the stage. On top of that, we could see everything that was going on backstage; the backup dancers getting ready, people making preparations, and, when the time came, Bieber sitting in a chair waiting for his encore. His encore was Sorry, and it was definitely my favorite song that he performed. Rain poured down on him, and I have to say, he looked super hot dripping wet. At the end he held his little brother and thanked the crowd for coming. Jess and I then got a perfect view of Justin walking down the stairs to backstage with his brother and saw a man hand him a towel and then wrap his brother up in one.
Overall, the concert was even more fun than I thought it was going to be; easily worth every penny. When we left the building, it was raining profusely and the car was several blocks away, so we ran through the rain singing “Is it too late now to say soorrryyy?” just like Justin just did. We went to McDonald’s and indulged on chicken nuggets, fries and McFlurries.
Sadly, all good things have to come to an end, and the night did indeed come to a close, but that day was one of if not the best day of my summer so far. With the summer going by as fast as it is it’s important to make the absolute most of it, and I’m happy to say that that day I did. It was a perfect day with perfect company all around from start to finish. Random fun fact: we're still talking about the concert.
