It's New years Eve.... after 4 agonizing months of tracking down tickets, my whole group of friends was able to find tickets. ALL of us, we all got in.  Well, except for one.
It was her birthday. Phish's first show back, New Years Eve... Megs Birthday, they were all on the same day. And she was the one without a ticket.
 
Speaking with her boyfriend, I had been encouraging them to go down, to try and look amongst the thousands of ticket less to at least TRY and look for one...They needed ONE ticket....they HAD to be able to find one, when I
called him on my way down to the city on that Tuesday morning, I shouted  with happiness that they too were on their way down from MA. I was prepared to stand outside all day long with them, to do whatever I could to make sure they were both in there, by my side. There was no one or the other, it had to be both. There was just no other way. We agreed to meet outside of our hotel, and go from there.....

When I met up with them, they had smiles on their faces, and had said they'd purchased a ticket,  when we looked at it, we determined that it was fake, but hey, worth a shot. All day long, none of us brought up the possibility that they wouldn't get in, even though we knew the ticket wasn't real,  not one of us could come to terms that entry was unlikely, upon entering the Garden, anticipation ran high within all of us. Anticipation for the show, anticipation about their fate, we walked in, fearful of the possible rejection, Meg's eyes teared up as she (or we) couldn't accept the possibility that the show wouldn't happen for them, it made me want to cry with her, as she wanted nothing more than to just be inside that show, and neither did we...

As we went through security, and entry was denied, I have never in my life  felt that way before,  it felt so wrong.  I was shaking with fury, and sadness, in a moment of sheer panic, I passed my mail order ticket back to her boyfriend, with the hopes that it would get them in, forgetting about the barcodes that would again prevent them, those of us who were inside watched as they were again rejected, and went to the section we had designated as "ours" before the show with heads hung low, and sat there,  we didn't have the elated expressions that the others did, something was missing, as excited as I was that I was about to see Phish, my favorite band, my  favorite THING, for the first time since Vegas 2000, I was struggling with the events that had just took place.

I wasn't ready to accept that they  wouldn't be there. As the rest of our crew came in after us, we all sat  there, feeling shitty, I just kept saying to myself, "they're going to  get in" over and over again.  I was just hoping that they wouldn't give  up.

Then it happened, I will never as long as I live, forget the smiles on their faces as we saw the 2 of them approaching our section!!!!!! We all let out a yell, we all hugged, and asked how it came to be.  A security guard, one with a heart, and one that will not be soon forgotten, "walked them in" he walked them in because they had 2 real tickets in their hands, he walked them in because they HAD to be there..

It was one of my favorite moments surrounding any of the shows I've seen Phish perform, as soon as I saw them, a HUGE wave of relief and then so much excitement came over me, it was one of the happiest moments of my life, we were going to see Phish, and we were going to do it Together.

Phish is my friends, the reason I know Meg, and everyone else I was with is because of Phish, without them there, sure I would have had a blast, but it wouldn't have been as I had hoped, or how I had anticipated that it would be for the months before the event,  I wouldn't have seen Meg bouncin' around with a smile on her face the whole time, I wouldn't have had the heart to tell her boyfriend that we heard Mound,  I wouldn't have seen the smile,  the ENORMOUS smile on his face when they played it, something would have been missing, had they not have been there, so THANK YOU, security guard!! Thank You for a great birthday present, thank you for making our new year start out right, thank you PHISH for giving us the opportunity to even have any of that happen to us.

- me