Now, you must appreciate that I rate heavy metal music only slightly higher than the creation of Spam on my list of the greatest achievements of the human race. Thus, it is with a certain amount of chagrin, if not outright embarrassment, that I set out to describe my involvement (minimal, good reader, I assure you) with the band Motley Crue.
It began, as I recall, on a Friday evening. I had just finished watching Television (not the medium, the programme about the medium - that is, I was watching the show on the medium on the medium - I mean, well, you know what I mean), when somebody bounded up the stairs and rushed into my brother's room.
"Ira," my mother, obviously excited, shouted, "Come and take the phone. Quick!"
On my way downstairs to the phone, I gathered we had won two tickets to the Motley Crue concert. I, apparently, was chosen for this unique and wondrous honour because I was the youngest person in the house at the time. I was touched.
"Congratulations!" the woman on the phone screamed hysterically. "You've just won two tickets to see Motley Crue from Q107!"
"Gee," I said, adopting a coy attitude, "how did I do that?" (For those who would make a career of winning tickets through such promotions, apparently coy does not play well on the radio. But, I digress...)
The woman, ignoring my question, lowered her voice to take down my vital statistics, adding, when she was done: "We'll mail those tickets to you first thing. Oh, by the way, do you mind being on the air?"
I said I didn't. What the heck? I wasn't going to let the woman's high-pitched enthusiasm suck me into making a screaming fool of myself on the air. I was going to be cool.
"Well," the woman went back to yelling, "We have our latest Motley Crue ticket winner, Iran, on the line!" I winced. "Would you like to dedicate a song to somebody?"
Oops! "No, thank you," I politely replied. If I had had a couple of hours notice, I might have done some research on the station's playlist (I prefer listening to CFNY and CHUM-FM, if truth be known, and have only listened to Q107 when somebody changed the channel on the radio when I wasn't paying attention), but I was totally unprepared for the call. I got the sinking feeling that I sounded more fool than cool, a feeling that was confirmed in subsequent conversations with friends in the days to come.
"What's your favourite radio station?"
"Q107...?" I tentatively guessed. The woman raised her voice in a shriek of joy (she may have shouted, "Alright!" or she may have been practicing a loon call - tough to say), and the line clicked dead. Was that all there was to it? As I listened to the telephone's hiss, the whole episode left me with a strangely impersonal feeling.
I sought out my parents, thrilled that I had won something, but vaguely uneasy about becoming a goof just like all the others for free tickets to a concert I wasn't even interested in seeing. My parents and their friends were thrilled, too (quite possibly because they had no clue about the music in question). All I could think to say was, "Does anybody want any Motley Crue tickets?"
It was a question that I would ask repeatedly in the days to come. The general feeling among those to whom I offered the tickets was that they would rather eat lives worms. Easy for them to say; they hadn't been burdened with the winning tickets in the first place, had they?
Time passed, as it has a nasty habit of doing. A week later, it occurred to me as I was eating spaghetti that the tickets hadn't come. I had mixed feelings: I didn't want to go to the concert, but I didn't want to be gypped out of my tickets.
"Anything come in the mail for me today?" I asked my mother the next morning.
"No," she answered. "Were you expecting something?"
"Not really," I said, and skulked off. Where could those tickets be? The concert was only...three days away! I mean, I wouldn't have much time to give the tickets away at this rate.
The next morning, I was up at six o'clock in the morning, even though the mail isn't usually delivered before nine. I gloomily sat around the kitchen, throwing handfuls of dry Captain Crunch into my mouth every so often and keeping an eye on the front door. "What are you doing up?" my sister asked, on her way out to go to school.
"Just...sitting," I replied, smiling a ghastly grin. Soon after, the mail came, but the tickets weren't there.
What to do? What to do? What to do? I thought about calling up the radio station. Maybe...maybe they had gotten the address wrong...maybe the tickets had been sent to somebody else! Chances were they had found their way into the hands of somebody who might actually appreciate the music, but that wasn't important any more: I was the one who had won them. Me! I had won the tickets fair and square, and I wanted them...
I was crushed when we didn't receive any mail the next day. "What do you mean, there's nothing there?" I cried. "What about my tickets? I want my free concert tickets!" Sobbing, I rushed to my room and didn't come out for a week.
That was a while ago, thank goodness, and I'm much better now. Much better. I've learned to deal with life's little disappointments, and I can go weeks, sometimes months, without thinking about heavy metal music. All in all, I think everything has been for the best.
I just dread the day that somebody tries to give me free tickets to Vyper...
