I'm A Rule Follower

I'm a rule follower. I believe rules are made for a reason. It makes me uncomfortable to break the rules. If others around me break the rules, I generally feel the need to inform them that they are breaking the rules, which leads me into this story: 

During my super crazy finals week, we went to the 2 Dave Matthews Band concerts at the Verizon Wireless Ampitheater in Alpharetta. Normally DMB comes through Atlanta later in the summer and they only play 1 show at Lakewood. This year there were 2 shows, so we went to both. We didn't love the Ampitheater in Alpharetta. It is too far away! It is nice and new, but it is also small. The best thing is their parking. You are assigned a lot to park in with your tickets, and they get people in and out quickly. Anyway, I was hoping that they would be a bit more proactive with policing the weed smoking, as it is quite common at DMB concerts. I have a theory that the weed smoking increases the closer you get to the front. 

On the first night, we had seats down in what was called the orchestra section, which was basically the floor sections with seats. We were about halfway back in this section, so pretty close to the front, and we were in the middle of our row. There was a couple sitting to my right, but as the concert started, they moved down a seat for some reason. Anyway, it left a seat between us. As the concert started, two guys and one girl came in on the row in front of us with two other young-middle-aged-ish that were already there. It was clear that these were not there seats, but that some tickets were passed off somehow. One of the guys proceeded to climb over the seats into our row to take the seat next to me. Once he climbed over, he leaned over and yelled into my ear that "IT'S HER BIRTHDAY!" I think that his attempt at explaining why they were sitting in seats, really good seats, that they did not pay for. Meanwhile, I'm thinking that this is ridiculous, if you couldn't/didn't get really good tickets like we did, then go back to your purchased seats, and I DON'T CARE IF IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY! This guy was clearly a Mr. Chatty-chat and kept trying to say things, which I could not hear, so I was forced to ignore him.

Mr. Chatty-chat is on the right in this picture. 

The guy in this picture is the one who I believe was passing the tickets to the other people who showed up after the concert started. He looked a lot like Danny from The King of Queens. He also had some of the strangest dance moves I have ever seen. 

Anyway, apparently these middle-agers were super cool so they brought their weed with them. The two guys in front of us passed the joint between them, and proceeded to hack and cough something serious. (I had to ask Ben for the term "joint." I was going to call it a weed cigarette.) Clearly these guys were pros. (Ha!) Then they passed the joint to Mr. Chatty-chat next to me. He squatted down (we were standing) to get him a puff and I was thinking "oh no you did not just smoke weed next to me and subject me to weed smoke in my face when that is not even your darn seat!" Again, I'm a rule follower. I was all agitated by this and started to gripe to Ben that I was not going to take that and planned to do something about it. While he was getting his weed puff, I tapped him on the shoulder with my pointer finger a few times. This is our conversation:

Me: Excuse me, you need to get rid of that or I was going to tell the people that worked there because it was not allowed. 

Chatty: You're going to go tell?

Me: Umm, yeah! It is not allowed and I don't want to smell it!

Ben: (He felt the need to interject apparently.) At least blow it the other way. (Ben doesn't like a confrontation as usual.)

Me: No don't blow it the other way! Get rid of it! It is not allowed and I don't want to smell it!

Chatty: Ok. (He passes it back to the other middle-aged losers in front of us.)

Chatty: I'm sorry. Thank you for telling me that. 

Me: Mm-hmm.

Chatty: Seriously, I don't want to offend anyone. 

Me: Mm-hmm.

Chatty: Again, I'm sorry. 

Then Chatty decided it would be best to leave, so he crawled up into the next row, and then moved up another row so that he could smoke up there. 

These guys were such losers. They were very obviously middle-aged, former frat-boy divorcees that probably had some sort of business job and they just come to the one concert so that can smoke them some weed. Also, based on the smell, they must have bought the weed from some high schooler because it wasn't very strong, but very smokey. (I have learned that the stronger the smell is, the more concentrated and expensive it is, thanks to our weed-happy neighbor down the hall.) 

Also, the lady that I mentioned at the beginning (IT'S HER BIRTHDAY!) was there with her boyfriend and judging by her dancing and yelling, she was definitely drunk. Her boyfriend seemed somewhat embarrassed by her.