100 on a scale of 1-10

On Taylor Swift, The Martian, and making 100,000 friends in one night

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One last Taylor Swift post.

Often I pair what I’m reading with what I’m writing. When I spent three days kayaking the Mississippi River, I read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. When I explored a remote area of Minnesota, I dove into Endurance about Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctica adventure.

Sometimes it happens on accident. I read Frankenstein while camping in White Sands National Park. Frankenstein opens and closes with a long trek across the Arctic. At night, White Sands looks like the Arctic, and it was freezing while I was there. It creeped me out, TBH.

This weekend, we stayed in an Airbnb 20 minutes from where the show was. On the bookshelf was a copy of The Martian. I picked it up, started reading Friday night … and I finished it Sunday. I can’t tell you the last time I devoured a book like that. (Or the last time I had that much time to read in one weekend, but that’s a topic for another day.)

What’s that got to do with Taylor Swift? I’m getting to that.

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As we left the house Friday in advance of the Saturday show, my younger daughter said, “the next time I see my bedroom, I will have seen Taylor Swift in concert.”

My older daughter is learning to drive, so she drove the two of us across the state (the other four girls, three parents and two boys crammed into a couple minivans). We stopped at a makeup store so she could buy glue-on fingernails to complete her Era outfit (if you know you know). She asked my opinion on which to buy, and I mumbled an answer as I tried not to faint dead away. Then she drove and I deejayed her requests for Taylor Swift’s greatest hits, deep cuts, and everything in between from St. Louis to Kansas City. (This is so true.)

My girls tease me because I talk to strangers all the time. (I come by it honestly.) We went to get coffee the morning of the show near our Airbnb in suburban Kansas City. The first person I saw when I walked in was a young woman wearing a Taylor Swift t-shirt and holding a baby in a onesie that said, “Lil Swiftie.” The day I don’t engage her in conversation is the day I’m blind, deaf and dumb, have a gag over my mouth and I’m chained in a basement.

I asked if she went to the show the night before and she said yes. “What is her best song, and why is it Shake It Off?” I asked. (It’s possible my girls tease me because I’m annoying when I talk to strangers and not just because I talk to them.)

She said her own favorite song is Treacherous, “and his,” and here she held up the baby, “is Shake it Off.” I had no doubt that baby somehow communicated his delight at that song. I asked her to rate the concert on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being best. She said 100.

Farther up the line was another set of women who had gone to the show the night before. I engaged them in conversation, too. They also rated the show 100 on a scale of 1-10. Soon the my daughters and their three friends joined the conversation.

The afternoon of the show was pure anticipation as the girls dressed and talked excitedly about getting their minds blown in just a few hours. I did not go to the show. One of the mom’s did. During the concert, she texted videos of my girls and their three friends, which I watched when I wasn’t devouring The Martian. They are all deliriously happy in every single second of every single clip — just screaming, bouncing, fist-pumping, singing-along joy. When the camera pans, you can see the five of them in sync with thousands upon thousands of others.

It wasn’t long before I saw a parallel between what I was reading and what I was watching.

On its surface, The Martian is about rescuing a man from Mars. But it’s really about the lengths to which we will go to find human connection. On its surface, the Taylor Swift show is about great music you can sing and dance to. But it’s really about providing a place for fans to find human connection.

And who needs that connection more than teen-age girls? They face unprecedented challenges. Growing up today sucks. Social media amplifies our ever-present meanness beyond any reasonable person’s ability to endure.

At the concert, and in the time leading up to it, they had shelter from that storm. For months on end, my girls prepped and prepared and listened and planned and talked with their actual best friends, then they enjoyed (a word not nearly strong enough) the night with 100,000 of their new best friends.

I wanted to cry watching the videos, and if I sit down and watch them again, I might.

I don’t want my kids to remember what my wife and I gave them if those things are physical items. But I’d consider it a great success if they remembered us for giving them connections—and incredible, powerful, forever memories—with their friends, and that’s what this weekend was about.

“Girls,” I said the next morning, “on a scale of 1-10, how would you rate —”

“100!” they interrupted.