I'm only going to share it because look, it happened. I am a human. We live in an edited world of glossy, social media selfies, Facebook funnies, and only-take-a-photo-from-my-best-side reality. But kiddos, we actually live in the real world. Sometimes shit goes sideways. I feel the need to share this story with you so I can make you feel better about accidentally hitting "reply all" to 78 people on a personal email. Or accidentally dropping your phone in the toilet. (I have done all of these things, btw.) We should all feel better about being a flawed, stupid, dumber-than-a-box-of-rucks human being sometimes.
Let me tell you what happened.
Several months ago, my husband and I concluded that it's totally still okay to use our birthdays as an excuse to go on a vacation. We forwent the traditional dinners out and sugar-coma inducing cakes and instead decided to go see our Lord and Savior Justin Timberlake on his just-announced tour. At the time Kansas City wasn't one of the tour stops, so we took it as a sign to fly to one of our fave places to watch JT kill it in April...
I consider the two of us to be pretty cultured, but damn we are suckers for Vegas. We love the
Because the JT Concert was obviously going to sell out, I laid out my plan. I first became a Tennessee Kid in order to have access to the presale. Bye bye, $25.00 annually. Then I hunkered down like a GI Joe in a WWII fox hole and waited impatiently for the moment to arrive. When 10:00 AM arrived, I did my little click click click, found affordable-ish seats in the arena and booked it.
Everything was set. We were going to Vegas.
Fast forward to this morning. I'm there in my home office, catching up on emails and maybe shopping at Target for shit I couldn't possibly need, when an email notification popped up from JT's tour. My knee-jerk reaction was to delete it, but something told me it might be relevant to our upcoming trip this weekend. I opened it.
It was an automated email from Justin's tour asking me to give my feedback on the amazing concert last night. Did we have fun? Was the arena clean? Would we be coming back to Quebec soon? How was the-
QUEBEC? EXCUSE ME?
No. It couldn't be. Right? This was an email glitch. Surely.
With trembling hands and repeating "no no no no no no no no" like Rain Man, I pulled up my email receipt with the JT tickets, only to find my. worst. nightmare.
This is what my worst nightmare looks like.
I had bought tickets to Justin Timberlake in CANADA for the week before his Vegas performances.
Now, for those of you that are clenching your butt cheeks for me and feeling my pain, add in a few more clenches for when I realized this:
- If I had tickets for Canada, then I didn't have tickets for Vegas
- I had to tell my husband
Every marriage has a moment like this. One person effs up and the other has no idea it's even happened yet. Like when Carrie cheated on Mr. Big in Abu Dhabi or wherever. For a hot minute, I considered keeping the secret. I mean, I could get away with it. He very rarely checks the credit card statements. If I bought tickets to the Vegas show now, he'd never even know.
And that my friends, is how the slippery slope toward everything unholy in a marriage begins.
I knew I had to tell him.
Here's another fun fact about me. I can't sit quietly on big news. Good, bad, or otherwise, I have to get it off my chest NOW.
(This is maybe why my friends don't ever tell me anything.)
(This is maybe why my friends don't ever tell me anything.)
And so, like the thoughtful wife I am, I called my husband at work at 9:02 on a Monday morning and sobbed into the phone, "Babe I have to tell you something, and I don't know how to do it. It's so bad. It's SO so bad and I'm so sorry and I don't even know how it happened."
(As I'm typing this I realize he probably thought I was confessing infidelity, and considering I wasn't, maybe I'm a little more of a genius than I realize.)
Anyways, I told him what had happened and he was basically like:
Can't blame him.
We had to choose. Option A: Cancel. Southwest flights were refundable and the hotel was refundable until midnight on Wednesday. Option B: Bite the bullet and buy tickets again, but at the correct venue.
We didn't think about it very long.
This was our vacation, and it was becoming more and more obvious that I really needed one. Justin Timberlake is our Elton John. Our Michael Jackson. Our fave performer in our fave city. Ultimately we opted to take it on the chin and purchase tickets to JT in Vegas. The other tickets from Quebec obviously can't be refunded and that investment is just...ugh I can't even think about it.
(By the way, you're welcome Quebec-ians at the concert that were able to spread out in our absence. Hope you enjoyed the extra leg room!)
At this moment, I still don't understand how it happened. I distinctly remember clicking the "Las Vegas @ T-mobile Arena" link. But how many times have you clicked on something and actually landed somewhere else? I think in my haste to GET THE TICKETS, with the impending doom of a sell out looming over me, I probably goofed and ended up on the wrong tour date. Either that or I was busy buying the afore mentioned shit at Target and just wasn't paying enough attention.
Look, we're lucky. The Kim and husband of 10 years ago would have been out the money, cancelling the vacation and doing this instead:
To our credit, my husband and I have worked hard and we've saved a little fun money, so we are able to make this work. We are incredibly fortunate.
Needless to say we shan't be returning home with souvenirs and will likely eat at McDonalds for each and every meal, but we will still belt out "Mirrors" and cry to "Young Man" and create everlasting memories. That's what truly matters.
So just remember, no matter what you see on FB or IG or Twitter, no filter can keep you from making a mistake. When it does happen, you can hide and pretend it didn't happen (which hey, you do you) or share it with the world (or in my case 50-ish readers), learn from it, and do your damnedest to never let it happen again.
Stay imperfect, my friends. I need the company.
