1. You do not stand in line in the rain for 13 hours to buy nosebleed seats. You purchase prime seating on Stub Hub and pay as much as you would for an Armani handbag.

2. You go to the concert carrying an Armani handbag. (Okay, you got it on sale but still.)

3. Dressing for the evening, you do not throw on some jeans cut scary-low and a pajama top and go. You obsess about the proper outfit for a week to ten days and finally select sensibly cut jeans (navel barely exposed) and a blouse from a store that is so hip that anything you buy there is a no-fail. You wear fine underwear, the type you’d hope to have on should your Keith Richards fantasy ever come true.
Your friend Laura says you look like a rocker and you do that thing called willing suspension of disbelief.

4. You are not packing any weed. You are bringing earplugs. Just in case.

5. You do not get driven to the venue by a friend who is so stoned his eyeballs are backwards and he smashes his Honda into a newsstand so you must complete your journey via subway. Instead you hire a guy with a sleek black car to take you to the Staples Center, wait for you, and drive you home without judging your back seat performance of a Stones medley.

6. Before the concert, you do not dine on Junior Mints and vodka. You go to a nice restaurant and order sensible salmon. (Okay, and vodka.)

7. During the pre-event dinner, when Laura slips a pill into her mouth, it is not a tab of acid but a digestive enzyme.

But in some ways, it’s the same as it ever was. For one thing, the majority of the fans are still baby boomers. And once the music starts, whether you are 20 or 60, you do not sit down for 2 ½ hours. When it ends, you are euphoric and you want to go to another concert the next day. You don’t, but you have a Stones glow for several weeks after (and fresh fantasies about Keith).

“It’s only rock ‘n roll, but I like it….”

Attention must be paid.

I think it was around 1953 when my father brought home our first television set, at which time, my siblings and I began what was to be a life-long relationship with the wonderful world of Disney.

Programming was limited back then, to be sure. There was a circus show (whose star was a blonde lady in a red sequined leotard). There was a show with a trio of amusing sock puppets and another with a duo of not so-amusing clowns, and then there was the one that was the real life-changer: The Mickey Mouse Club.

For one thing, it was an empowering show for us because it was kid-driven. Yes, there were a couple of old guys present on set, but they wore mouse ears so they didn’t read as true grown-ups. The Club kids were so cute, talented and well-behaved, they were a cluster of shiny-clean role models.

Just as when, in the sixties, my siblings and I each chose their favorite Beatle, we each had our Mouseketeer. Mine was Annette.

I thought she was kind of perfect, pretty in an unusual way, sweet, almost shy, and those mouse ears sat so neatly on her black, tightly coiled hair. I wished she could be my babysitter instead of Nancy who had extremely sweaty armpits and limited us to one Oreo apiece.

I also coveted Annette’s skirt.

Although we had a black and white TV, I was pretty sure that the skirt Annette (and her female ‘Keteer peers) wore was green. It had a thousand pleats, which gave it a swingy grace and capacity for swirl unlike any garment I’d ever seen.

At night in my prayers, I requested a favor in exchange for good behavior. I asked God if He would send me, by express mail if possible, a replica of Annette’s skirt. (I longed for a trip to Disneyland too, but I didn’t want to push it.)

While I understood that God was fairly busy, I was disappointed that my request was apparently in low position on his to-do list. While I waited in vain for the mailman to bring me my package from heaven, some stores began to stock “duplicates” of the dream skirt, but they were not the same, not even close—no swing, inadequate swirl. If Annette’s was the Cadillac, the knock-off was the Edsel.

I learned to accept life without Annette’s skirt (not to mention her babysitting services). Eventually she traded in her Mouseketeer wardrobe for beach movie bikinis (much to the delight of Frankie Avalon) and I switched obsessions to the Beatles. (Paul, to be specific.) And, as they used to sing at the close of each “Club” episode, “Now it’s time to say goodbye…” to Annette Funicello, but she’ll always be a prominent figure in my childhood memory bank.

P.S. My longing to go to Disneyland was only satisfied when I was over thirty, when I went with two of my siblings who were also still chasing the Disneyland dream. The place did not live up to our impossibly high expectations, but a Polaroid from our visit shows my brother and sister wearing traffic cones on their heads, a sure sign were having fun, or at least a lot of tequila.

I’m talking specifically about those 3-way ones. Who thought it was a good idea to install them in every dressing room in Bloomingdale’s? I guarantee you it was not a woman over fifty.

Let’s be honest. The only people who LIKE looking at themselves in a 3-way are those who have flawless bodies and those who have learned to embrace their flaws. These two groups together equal maybe .01% of the population. That leaves the other 99.99% of us reluctant to shop at Bloomingdales.

On a recent trip to the store, I tried on a dress that, in Mirror 1 (head-on) looked fabulous. I was imagining wearing it to great effect on some red carpet when I made the mistake of adjusting Mirrors 2 and 3 for a look at the rear. I rarely get such an accurate view, so I was startled to notice that some shape-shifting had taken place behind my back. (Not in a good way.)

“It’s not your ass, it’s the dress,” I told myself. I unzipped and stepped out of the frock, handling it with some hostility. I was careful to avoid further self-examination before slipping into my jeans. Once dressed, I couldn’t help looking again.

“It’s not your ass, it’s the jeans,” I said, and got the hell out of Bloomingdales.

If I were in charge of customer relations at that store, I’d remove two mirrors and install shadowy lighting in all dressing rooms. I’m pretty sure their sales would triple. If that approach was cost-prohibitive, I’d at least have the decency to post signage saying, “It’s not your ass, it’s our clothing.”

Meanwhile, I’m going shopping where I can completely avoid the trauma of a 360º self-inspecition: online.

(Illustration by Lindsay duPont)