As a parent, it’s always nice when you can find shared interests with your kids. As an autistic parent, it’s especially lovely because the primary way I relate to other human beings is via shared interests. I guess that’s part of being bad at small talk and other socially-related skills.

With Madalyn, my oldest, it has always been music.

When I say “always,” I’m not exaggerating. When I was pregnant with Madalyn I purchased a Walkman (*author pauses to lament how old she is*) with a pair of headphones inside an elastic band that went around my waist. I started playing The Beatles to her probably before she even had ears. There exists a video of Madalyn, on the day she turned 19 months old, correctly naming all the Beatles from a picture hanging in our living room.

When she was 5 I took her to see Ringo Starr in concert. We were in the second row of the theater and Ringo acknowledged her for dancing and singing along during Yellow Submarine. She doesn’t remember the show, but I do, and it was the beginning of our being concert buddies.

The next music we shared was Train and Maroon 5. I went through a brief(ish) Maroon 5 phase with them as my hyperfocus. I wasn’t as obsessive about Train but I enjoyed their album that was out at the time, as well as their older stuff. When she was 11, Mad came with me to see Maroon 5 in the pit. We have pictures of our hands touching the stage. Around the same time we went to see Train at the Oklahoma City Zoo Amphitheater. It poured rain on us the entire show, but we’d come prepared with ponchos and we had a great time.

Once I’d moved on from Maroon 5 I found myself without a hyperfocus group. Meanwhile, Madalyn started exploring music more on her own and eventually got into One Direction. I was snooty about it at first, as I’d never been into boybands in my life. (The Beatles ARE NOT A FKING BOYBAND, THANK YOU FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK.) In fact, I actively hated groups like that. My middle school bestie and I wanted NKOTB placed in a rocket and fired into the sun, for example.

In 2013, a documentary movie about One Direction, called This is Us, was released. Madalyn being too young to go to the movies alone, I volunteered to take her. Incidentally, this happened thanks to High School Musical. HSM 3 had recently been released in the theaters and my ex had taken Mad to it so I didn’t have to. When TIU came out I figured it was my turn to take the bullet, and off we went.

I walked out of the theater a fan. I even went back to see it again by myself.

Over the course of the next two years, Madalyn and I went to see 1D eight times. Yes, eight. We saw them three times on the Where We Are tour (Dallas, St. Louis, and Tulsa) and four times on the On the Road Again tour (San Diego, Santa Clara, Kansas City, and Chicago). Our final time seeing them before they split up was at Jingle Ball in Dallas in December 2015. We had endless amounts of fun and made memories I still look back on fondly.

Once 1D split Mad moved on to BTS. I refused to do so for quite some time. I saw what seemed like all my mutuals on Twitter switching over to being BTS fans and it upset me because it felt disloyal. (This is an autism-related thing…I am excessively loyal and it takes me a long time to switch gears in any sort of situation.) But they finally got me…New Year’s Eve 2019 I watched BTS perform in NYC and I was hooked. They were set to tour and had two dates in Dallas. Mad and I got floor tickets for both nights and soundcheck for night two.

The concert dates? May 9-10, 2020.

Needless to say we did not get these shows, as they were canceled for the pandemic. We waited, in limbo, for almost two years before we were able to attend their post-Covid shows. Instead of a proper tour, BTS did a series of four shows in Los Angeles in November/December 2021. Madalyn and I attended, in person, on night 3, and we were in the YouTube Theater, next door do SoFi, watching the show live stream the other three nights. Then, in April 2022, BTS did four shows in Las Vegas. Madalyn and I drove up there and attended night 3.

Our most recent concert experience was seeing Min Yoongi a.k.a. Suga a.k.a. Agust D on his solo tour before he enlisted. In May 2023 we traveled to Oakland, CA, for his show there. We had GA floor tickets and, for the first time, I got a really good look at a member of BTS with my own eyes (rather than on a monitor).

Currently, we have no solid plans to see any shows, but we have the intention to do so. BTS, having just completed their military service, has not gotten back on tour yet. However, their comeback is set for March 2026 and there were certainly be a tour after that. Madalyn and I will be moving heaven and earth to be there. Hopefully for multiple dates.

Madalyn turns 25 this year, which means we’ve been attending concerts together for 20 years now. And to be honest? I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather do that with.