Last Sunday, in case you’ve forgotten in the whirl wind of classes, activities, and last-minute errands, was move-in day for upperclassmen. I was here with bells on, in an all but full-to-bursting Taurus X, with my mom and sister. I won’t bore you with the endless flights of stairs, or the woes of learning how to use my air conditioner.
This is about the precise moment my little sister, Allie, heard that Ed Sheeran was coming to UD for the fall concert, the squeak of joy she let out at this news, and the madness I knew, from that moment, I would be going through to get her a ticket.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Ed Sheeran. I was guilty of poetic car-singing to “The A Team” this winter session (and with the daily, half-hour commute I was doing to Talley Middle School, paired with the popularity of that song? I know all the words). However, if I am the person who likes Ed Sheeran, Allie is the person who adores Ed Sheeran.
In the completely non-creepy, non-Belieber-esque way. I’m very proud.
Once we’d cleared things with the taxi dri- with my mom, we started planning how best to acquire these elusive tickets. Initially, my friends and I thought we would camp out outside Trabant to get both amazing seats and the free Ed Sheeran t-shirts for the first fifty people in line… Then decided that no, we valued sleep much more highly than tickets. In the end, the plan was to wake up and meet up at Trabant to get online at 3:45 a.m. Three fourty-five a.m., because we’d just escape the people who planned to get there at 4am. I set my alarm for 3:15, went to bed early, forced myself to sleep, and woke up as planned.
… I had not expected rain.
Rain at 3.30 a.m., taken by blogger Claire Davanzo.
Daunted does not even begin to describe how I felt setting out, in the pouring rain, for Trabant at 3.30 in the morning. I didn’t even make it to the bridge before I’d forgone my shoes in favour of walking barefoot, hopping through puddles. When I reached Trabant, at first I thought I was the first person there (!!!)… Only to discover that others had literally slept in the parking garage overnight in their wait for the tickets, marking their spaces on line by water bottles.
And then we waited from 4:00am to 8:00am, in the on and off rain and surprising morning chill. We were within the first 100 people, too, which meant we’d be enrolled in a chance to meet and greet Ed Sheeran.
We got our tickets (which, in case you were wondering, are excellent). I thought that was it. That I’d managed it.
Until I found out I’d won the meet and greet.
Thanks to a very, very generous friend and fellow winner (thanks, Matt!!), my sister and I will be doing that, too. Which of course, means an incoming “Quest for Ed Sheeran, Part 2.” Stay tuned.
