So Hold On To the Ones Who Really Care

This week, “MMMBop” as we know it turned 21, I turned 30, and that combination has me thinking a lot about how I got here as a fan. It goes without saying that I am not the oldest or youngest fan by a long shot, and I’m proud to belong to a diverse fan base of all ages and backgrounds. I'm not writing this for me because woe is me and at the ripe old age of 30 I suddenly have all of the answers, but for all of us who have grown up loving a band and have had to navigate exactly what that means. Here's what it has meant for me.

If you’d asked me in 1997, I never would have thought I’d be following Hanson at 30 (or 20, for that matter). When you’re nine and daydreaming about meeting your idols, you think about meeting them tomorrow. You envision that one perfect day—and it’s always present day. You don’t think about what happens the day after that or think up some arbitrary cutoff date that means you’re “too old” and now you're supposed to like curtains instead. You don’t think about growing up and still chasing the music you love. You don’t dream about being an extra in a music video in 12 years, or dancing with a 27-year-old ancient-to-you version of Taylor Hanson, or attending their beer festival when you’re all well past legal drinking age. You don't think about how you'll feel when you're 25 and your friends are all walking down the aisle to the altar while you're walking down the aisle to seat 19A.

As an adult though, those thoughts start creeping in, or at least they did for me. When I got back into the Hanson scene and truly became a part of the fan base in 2006, I was 18. I was the perfect age to fall into this weird world of wanting to follow a band and actually being old enough to go out and make it happen without someone telling me no. I had wide eyes and shallow pockets and always wanted more. And with the joys of camping on streets and experiencing my first few times in the front row and meeting the band came the distinct fear that one day it would all go away. I don’t know at what point you get old enough to start feeling nostalgic about moments as they’re happening, but I felt that way constantly from the time I went to my first show.

I was always telling myself not to take anything for granted because I knew it couldn’t last (MMMBop, much?). I remember sitting in a dressing room interviewing Hanson and telling myself to take in every detail because I knew it was all going to be a memory soon. I can remember sitting on sidewalks at 20 and worrying that there might be some sort of shelf life to it all, and that I should “get it all out of my system” or do as much as I could while I was still able. It’s not that I thought I’d quit loving Hanson’s music, but more of an underlying fear that there would come a day when I would be expected to love it more quietly and from the confines of my car and iTunes instead of a sleeping bag 4,000 miles from home. I didn’t know if my career or family might one day not only take the front seat, but all of the seats, or that God forbid I might grow out of them and find out it was all a phase. It's nice to be able to take a retrospective moment now and realize that I haven't outgrown Hanson at all, and if anything I've grown more into them. I haven't spent 11 years getting the traveling fan lifestyle out of my system and avoiding growing up--I've spent it making lifelong friends and figuring out that being an adult and being an adventurous fan don't have to be mutually exclusive things. It just means that at 30, I've racked up a lot more frequent flier miles to keep going.

So for what it’s worth, life is weird and I’m kind of glad my nine year old dreams didn’t come true because reality turned out to be better. I'm even more grateful that my 20-year-old nightmares didn't come true and that I've managed to outlive the shelf life of the "phase" label, and I didn't wake up on my 30th birthday and feel the need to trade all of my concert tickets for collectible china patterns because I'd passed some socially acceptable expiration point. If I got written off as childish and crazy for hanging out on sidewalks at 20, then the people that are still in my life at 30 should realize by now that there's something more to it than that. If not? You know the saying--hold on to the ones who really care, and screw the rest. Or something like that.

And for the record, they say with age comes wisdom, but to quote an equally older Zac Hanson, "hell if I know" what kind of flower is going to grow. At this rate, it's probably a baby turtle.