Last night, through an unusual...

...set of circumstances, I found myself in the parking lot of the UIC Pavilion before a Phish concert. (It's a long story.) If you've never been to a Phish concert, the crowd alone is well worth the price of admission. (Not only have I been to one, but I even dragged my wife to a Grateful Dead concert back in the late 1980s. Priceless.)

Anyway, picture if you can a paunchy, balding fifty-something strolling through a drug-addled crowd on a beautiful August evening in a white polo shirt, khaki shorts and topsiders. (Again, priceless.) At first I thought, I must look like a narc! But upon further reflection, a narc would have a much better disguise than this. More likely, I looked like some suburban father frantically searching for his underaged daughter among the corrupting hordes.

Actually, I seemed to attract little attention. Go figure. The late teens and twenty-somethings were just having too good a time to be distracted by some geezer on a gorgeous late-summer night. Oh, and they were all under the influence of an ungodly amount of chemicals, remember?

But it was quite a show, and all the usual cast members were present: the Jerry Garcia worshipper looking desperately for his last-minute "miracle ticket," several scantily-clad young lasses with tattoos and dirty bare feet, and a number of dreadlock-sporting merchants selling their wares, including the obligatory Grilled Cheese Guy. (Looked good, actually.) There was even a group of a half dozen or so Hare Krishnas, straight out of some '70s time warp, dancing and banging on their tambourines.

Like I said, I floated through the masses relatively unnoticed, except for one of those said merchants who called out to me and waved. (Actually, it was more like a primal scream, but it was definitely in my direction.) He smiled at me as if to say, What on earth are you doing here? And I smiled back and waved as if to respond: I know; it's crazy, isn't it? But this is a Phish concert, remember? Anything's possible.

After I finally reached the other end of the parking lot all I could think was, I wish I had walked slower. It was that much fun. That, and: Have a good time, everybody. Enjoy your youth! Before you know it, you'll be old like me.