There are always new things to be learned. Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, there’s some new little discovery that makes you stop and go, “Huh!”  And this was one of those weekends with lots of “Huh!” moments, a couple of them bigger moments than others.

For one thing, I don’t belong at outdoor music festivals. Now, I’ve been to concerts before. I’ve been to concerts outside. I’ve been to concerts where I’ve noticed the smell of something strange wafting through the air. But I’ve never been to a legitimate outdoor music festival, complete with vendors selling septum decor and design-your-own drug paraphernalia kits. And I know I may be behind the curve when it comes to drug use, but it’s still illegal to smoke pot out in public, right? And from what I observed, asking for a hit from complete strangers who’ve made a conscious decision to reject hygienic practices and grow science projects growing in their hair is considered completely okay. And apparently, I witnessed a girl having a bad trip! “Yeah,” the person sitting next to me on the damp ground said knowingly, “Mushrooms.” I asked why somebody would do that. She shrugged, “Sometimes you have a bad trip.” So a good trip is worth the risk of taking a bad trip? If I was that girl, I would be embarrassed. But what does she care? Would she even remember the experience tomorrow? And she certainly had more than enough sympathetic strangers who had “been there, done that” and were willing to scoop her flailing body up onto their laps until she came down from her trip gone wrong. Talk about a sense of community! It was like family! Maybe I was meant to learn something from this?

Yes. I learned I’m to old for this sh*t.  I didn’t even have “Attend an outdoor music festival” on my bucket list, but I’m penciling it in, checking it off, and now I never have to do it again.

It may not sound like it, but I can sometimes be fun…unless you put me in a situation I don’t belong. At that point, I should spontaneously start growing bark because I’m not just going to be a stick in the mud, I’m going to be a freaking redwood tree blocking the path between YOU and FUN. So after this weekend, I’m fairly confident I won’t be invited to another outdoor music festival where the goal is to out-smoke and out-weird each other. And you know what? I’m okay with that.

Which leads me to my other “Huh!” moment of the weekend. If you ever decide to date someone a whole lot younger than you, insist on only doing stuff together that YOU like to do. That way, you always look like you’re loving life! Look how much fun you are! And then when it comes to that outdoor festival, young people nonsense, let him run off and do that with his equally young friends. Trust me, it will stretch out the life of your relationship.