U2 3D

I left for my first trip to Spain 16 years ago today. I spent the semester studying there and to be perfectly honest, it was completely out of character for me to decide to do something like that. I come from a close-knit family and I had never gone more than 60 miles from home by myself and I had never been away from my family for more than a week or so at a time. It makes a lot of sense, then, to hear that my parents didn't think I would actually fly from Lincoln to New York by myself and then get on a plane to Spain. As parents are inclined to do, they did a little plotting and came up with a plan. My actual flight to Spain was on the 13th, but my dad proposed that we go early and spend a day in Manhattan together. And there is where the U2 connection comes in.

I had tickets to U2 for September 11. A group of friends was going. I was DYING to see U2 in concert. I stood in Kathryn's bedroom in the basement of her parents' house and I think I cried a little when I had to tell her that I could not be part of the big pilgrimage to see our boys from Dublin.

My trip to New York with my dad was amazing, of course, and we managed to go up the Empire State Building, see the Statue of Liberty (Look, Malia, there's the Statue of Liberty over there. Now let's hurry back to the subway and get moving. We've got the entire island to see today), walk around Wall Street, get to Central Park and see some of the Metropolitan Museum of Art all in the same day. We stayed near Times Square before Times Square was cleaned up. At least I think we were in Times Square. My sense of direction was no better then than it is now. I do remember the Afghan deli on one side of our motel and the XXX movie theater on the other. That first trip to New York was one of the first times my dad and I used public transportation to really see a place. By my count, we've ridden buses and subways together in five different countries.

Like any dutiful dad, he got me on that plane to Madrid. As could be expected, it was a tough semester for me, but I stuck it out and learned Spanish (just like I was supposed to). But I was still just a little bitter about missing the U2 concert with my friends, which I had heard was a good one. To add insult to injury, U2 came to Spain as part of that tour, and I had returned to the US before they got there. I joked for many years about having missed U2 on two continents. Finally, FINALLY, U2 came to Omaha in 2005 and I got to see them live for the first time. Joanna and I went together and our seats were bad, the tickets were expensive and I think the sound was a little off, but I was there. When I finally saw the movie tonight, on the 16th anniversary of the concert I missed, Joanna and I were there together again. The sound was perfect and the seats were great, but I'll admit that my brain wasn't completely on the movie.

I realized that I've listened to U2 for over half my life and still, at this very moment, if I could only listen to one musical group for the rest of my life, it would be them. I've watched them go from alternative rockers to pop stars to irritating egos to pop culture icons who know how to use their status. I listened to them when MTV was still about the music. Driving in my car, I've played cassettes by U2, CDs by U2 and now I listen to them on my (U2 edition) ipod. I still know most of the words to most of the songs. (But I bow down to Joanna, who owns every album they've put out and knows all the words to every song they've ever sung.) Here's the kicker, though. How did I meet Derek? Derek's brother is married to my friend, Joanna, who I met when I moved back to Lincoln. Joanna was a friend from college of my friend, Kathryn. They met because Kathryn walked by Joanna's dorm room, saw her poster of Bono, and said, "I love him." So it may be a little bit round about, but I did meet my husband because of Bono.

So Bono, Edge, Larry and Adam, thanks so much for the good times and the good music. Thanks for being the kind of stars who, instead of complaining about fame, use it to get things done. And keep rockin'.