By Katie Burke
I accidentally gave birth to two Swifties. In case you aren’t in the know, a Swiftie is a hardcore, almost obsessive fan of pop star Taylor Swift.
These Swifties go way beyond casual fanhood: they love her music, go to her concerts, follow her on social media and will defend her every movement with their dying breath. Creating these Swifties within my own house wasn’t on purpose. I don’t know how it happened. But to my kids, Taylor Swift walks on water and can do no wrong. As it turns out, four billion other fans agree with this statement and we all collectively crashed Ticketmaster to prove it.
When I woke up on Nov. 15, I was literally determined to end up with Taylor Swift concert tickets to her Eras stadium tour. As if that just wasn’t asking for additional heartbreak in my already sad life.
To even be eligible to buy these presale tickets, you had to register three weeks in advance where you selected the top three locations where you would be willing to travel NEXT YEAR and then hope against all hopes that you got assigned to one of them. And let me tell you, none of them were close to Idaho Falls. Since I barely know where I’m going to be next week, registering for speculative dates in faraway cities seemed a little daunting.
But I was here for it out of love for my kids.
Between the girls and I, we were selected for presale codes for the Denver, Chicago and New Jersey shows, which felt like favorable odds. Until we realized that getting tickets for the Eras tour was like real-life Hunger Games and good odds mean you just die sooner.
I started my day early in the digital line. When I rolled up to Dutch Bros that morning, the sweet barista asked if she could scan my app and we were both shocked when I screamed NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO TOUCH MY PHONE TODAY.
Once I explained there were only 80 people in front of me for T. Swift tickets in New Jersey, she was like,
I’ve got you girl, I will enter your phone number manually.
You can only imagine my sheer grouchiness when I was seven people out from selecting my tickets when the line paused for an hour and then kicked me to the back of the queue. I probably screamed mean words. I don’t really remember.
I was so dedicated to the cause that I told my coworkers to ask themselves if any of the questions they had for me were more important than Taylor Swift and, trick question, the answer probably wasn’t yes. I did sit through an accounting meeting at some point during the day, but afterwards I realized my clients would probably want me to call a re-do on that one because I’m not even sure what decisions I was making.
And one by one, the New Jersey, Chicago and Denver show ticket availability fell before my eyes and sold out before I could get in to buy tickets. By early afternoon, and having accomplished shockingly little, I was over it. It became obvious that it was a war out there, and only the soldiers with the strongest cell service were going to survive.
But then there was a glimmer. My boss’s sweet wife heard of my struggle and called to say, “Jackie used my code to get tickets in Arizona but she has her own for Seattle. You could ask her.” And I have so little pride that I shame lessly texted someone who has a very important finance job and asked for full access to her Ticketmaster account.
And she said YES!
When it was time to enter the waiting room, I didn’t get my hopes up. But then the line started moving fast. By this point in the day, my daughter, Cami, finished a whole school day and had joined me at “work” and we started screaming at each other that it
WAS HAPPENING.
And it did. Five of the crappiest tickets in the venue. We may actually be in the parking lot. But we don’t care. We have tickets to see Taylor Swift next July in Seattle. No plane tickets. No hotel. No real plans other than I’m going to make it happen. And that’s all I’m getting my kids for the next 10 birthdays and Christmases.