Thursday, June 18, 2009

Will the parents of these people please stand up? [Connor]

Last night I attended an amazing concert by BYU Vocal Point. I've heard them sing before and was expecting a great concert, and I wasn't disappointed. At least, not by the performers. But I was downright horrified by the behavior of some of the audience.

Immediately behind me and to the left was the standard for any performance: the annoying guy right behind you who laughs too hard. There's always one, whether it's a movie theater or a play or what. But this guy took it to new extremes. If, for example, a singer introduced himself as Bob Johnson, this guy would start start laughing his head off at a volume that shook dust off the ceiling. Honestly, he was MUCH louder than the actual singers, who had him outnumbered nine to one and were equipped with microphones and powerful amplifiers. So every time they talked, I would hear something like this: "This next song is a personal favorite of ours because it-" "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA DID YOU HEAR THAT GUY? A PERSONAL FAVORITE? HAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHA!" Needless to say, it drove me crazy. I started giving him strategic looks about a quarter of the way through. I thought he took a hint, but after intermission he resumed with a vengeance. I can only hope that his wife, if he ever finds one, is deaf.

Even worse, in my opinion, was the person behind me whose cell phone went off not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES during the first half of the concert. Now I can understand once- you're in a hurry, you forget to silence your cell phone and your friend calls to ask something. Now two times is pushing it- I don't know why the first time you disrupt the performance wouldn't be enough of a wake-up call to take the extra five seconds to turn your cell phone on silent. But THREE? I am very curious to know why that person evidently felt that showing off their ringtone was more important and interesting than an impressive concert that everyone present had taken time to attend and paid money to see. If they think that hearing their phone ring is more important than the actual concert, which it appears they did, I suggest that next time they stay home and keep their phone on. But if they want to attend a concert as a mature adult, I can only hope they realize that the people sitting around them, myself included, would probably have dragged them out into the parking lot and beaten them over the head with our own cell phones if that phone had rang one more time. Oh, and one more ring and that phone was going around the bowl and down the hole, if you get my drift.

I realize that was a lot of rambling. But for the life of me I cannot understand why some people apparently cannot help but make an effort to be disrespectful and downright irritating. If these people ever have the privilege again to attend a concert or at least a relatively civilized public event of some kind, I hope that they can, for the sake of the performers as well as the audience, at least try to PRETEND that they were raised by someone more civilized than wolves.

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