A Rose From Alannah
There are certain moments in life that seem small to everyone else but become permanent in our own private history. They do not alter the world. They do not make the newspapers. Yet decades later they remain bright and strangely untouched by time. One of mine happened in April of 1984, when I was twenty-six years old and still trying to figure out what kind of life I was meant to live. It took place at Illinois State University in Normal, where the Thompson Twins were scheduled to perform. I had not planned on going. Tickets were gone before I ever had the chance to buy them, and in those days there was no internet miracle waiting in your pocket. If you missed out, you missed out. But youth has a way of running on luck and improvisation. About a week before the concert, a friend of a friend somehow came up with two tickets—third row center. Even now, those words still sound improbable. Third row center. My own friends, ...
