Anna, like a lot of girls her age, loves Taylor Swift. A month or so ago I decided that I’d get her tickets to see her when she came to Columbus. The shows were already sold out and were skyrocketing on StubHub, so Allison and I found two tickets from a private seller, I bought them and, tonight, Allison took her to Nationwide Arena for the show. 

Ten minutes after I dropped them off, Allison called me: the tickets would not scan. They went to the box office and were told that they were fakes. The ticket agent wrote “VOID” on them and said, sorry, Anna and Allison could not enter the show. I turned around to pick them up.

I realize that being able to go to a show like that is a product of pretty tremendous privilege and that, compared to what a lot of kids contend with on a daily basis, finding out that your Taylor Swift tickets are bogus doesn’t exactly rate as a hardship. Still, she’s my daughter, parents are subjective and I felt awful. Awful because she couldn’t go to the show she’d been looking forward to. Awful because, in the interests of saving a few dollars, I got her tickets from some rando that turned out to be fakes. When I got to the corner of Front and Nationwide to pick them up I was close to tears myself and I expected tears from Anna.

There were no tears. Anna was sad, but she was cool about it. She’s always been way cooler about things than me. She’s going to be a general or a president or a bomb squad chief or something some day. Nothing fazes her. Or, if it does, it doesn’t cause her to lose touch with reality and perspective.

As we got close to home, Anna took me up on my offer to get a pint of Graeter’s ice cream from the grocery store. As we pulled into the garage, she suggested we watch a movie. She wanted to watch “The Dark Knight” again. Carlo was downstairs playing a video game so we watched it upstairs in my room with bowls of ice cream and three cats on the bed. It was our second or third time watching it together, so she offered some commentary:

“Way to go, Batman. You saved Rachel from falling out of the building, but you just left the Joker in your penthouse with a hundred innocent people. Gosh!” 

Anna is the absolute best.

As for the Taylor Swift ticket scammer? If the police or I figure out who he is, well …