Am I just getting old?

Thursday night I went to the Kid Rock concert at the Xfinity center in Mansfield. I have seen Kid three times before. I am a huge fan of his. I think he is ridiculously talented. He writes his own music. He plays multiple instruments, and he certainly crosses musical genres. Is he crude? Yes, but beneath some of his raunchy stuff is one of the few artists out there with all around talent.

Twice I saw Kid with Lynard Skynard. As you can imagine, yup,I'm a huge fan of Skynard. I absolutely loved the show. This year, Foreigner opened up for Kid Rock. They were awesome. The lead singer sounds exactly like he did years ago. My favorite songs by them are "Hot Blooded" and "Jukebox Hero"

After Foreigner's set, Kid played for about 90 minutes. He is a showman. He played multiple instruments and talked about some of his struggles in his life. He was a ton of energy and still rocks at 44 years old.

All that said, I felt very awkward at the show. First off it was not my crowd. Almost everyone had multiple tattoos and wore black or leather and seemed to be in a motorcycle gang. I'm more of a shorts and t-shirt kind of guy. More importantly, Since pot is no longer criminal in Massachusetts EVERYONE was lighting up. As I've said before, I have never smoked weed, but I am not against it. In the old days when it was illegal, you still smelled it concerts, but a few people were doing it. They would try to hide themselves so as to not get caught. At this concert, there was no hiding from it. So for three hours I was surrounded by the smell of herb.

About two thirds through the concert to my right I notice a girl about twenty three  completely bent over, hands on the ground, rubbing her backside against her boyfriends front side. It couldn't have been much more graphic if they were naked. I was in disbelief that this girl could be so dirty. Even drunk, most people have more class than that. And I asked myself, would I have found this so gross ten years ago?

I've been to Kid Rock concerts before, yet this is the first time the crowd made me uncomfortable. Were most of the fans at previous concerts Hell's Angel wannabes before? I assume they were. When I was a kid and saw a hot girl acting like a whore, I assume like any red blooded young man, I thought it was cool.
I don't know.

For the most part, I always feel like I'm young for my age. I like crude humor, and political incorrectness is funny to me. I goof around a lot. At work I get along very well with high school and college kids and have great debates about current events. Health wise, I feel exactly like I did at twenty years old. Someone said to me last week "you really don't have any grown up goals" to which I replied "basically I want to catch 30 pound stripers and see exactly how much asparagus it takes to make my pee smell." So I ponder whether or not, five or ten years ago, I would have been grossed out by a tramp grinding her boyfriend, or uncomfortable in a crowd full of pot smoking, tattooed, leather jackets. Or am I just getting old?

p.s. I'm justifying writing this piece in an outdoor blog by considering it a concert review. (at least the top half is)