Apparently, I’m getting too old to go to a concert anymore.
This has nothing to do with my hearing, or late nights, or even my taste in music, although my kids would argue that last point. There are plenty of concerts (and plays, and operas) that I’d like to see, but it’s getting harder and harder to buy a ticket.
I blame the box office.
Last week, it took me more than an hour to scope out seats for three concerts, because of those dang security codes on Ticketmaster. You know the ones: You enter a date, a venue and number of tickets, and you get this box with a seven-digit code that looks like it was written by a capuchin monkey on acid. And your job is to type in the code correctly so your transaction can continue.
Each concert date I checked, I had to enter that stupid code three times. (“Hmm. Is that an Old-English “T,” or a san serif “7,” or an Edwardian Script “I”?) The last time I misread so many letters and numbers was on the final exam for high school algebra.
Panic sets in after you flunk the code twice. Will I get kicked off the site? Blacklisted? And the most pressing question of all: Do they make the codes harder or easier to read as you go on? Am I working my way up the optometrist’s eye chart, or down?
Of course, practically the only way to buy tickets anymore is through Ticketmaster, and the easiest way to do that is online. Which is, no doubt, why they instituted security codes in the first place: to foil automated software that could gobble up all those Police and “Wicked” tickets for scalpers.
To be fair, there is an alternative for visually impaired shoppers who can’t see the code: Ticketmaster gives you a phone number for the venue, and a separate phone number for ticket orders — because, of course, the venue’s own box office can’t take orders by phone. Dante missed this particular circle of Hell.
And if jumping through those hoops isn’t to your liking, Ticketmaster posts this reassurance: “If you’re not sure what the code is, make your best guess. If you’re incorrect, you’ll get another chance to enter a different code on the next screen.”
Oh, goody. More torture in a font visible only to those under 30.
Now, Ticketmaster is one thing. But what happens when my favorite shopping sites start draping their checkout lines with security codes that wouldn’t look out of place in a Dali painting? When that Slacker Scribble font stands between me and that lilac two-ply cashmere sweater? I’m screwed.
Presbyopia — that creeping far-sightedness that makes you hold restaurant menus out the whole length of your arm — is one of those brick walls of middle age. You know it’s coming, you tell yourself you don’t really care. And then all in one day, bam, you can’t read the mouse print on the sweepstakes rules, you can’t tell if its $16 or $18 for the grilled sea bass … and you can’t read Ticketmaster’s secret language. Now all you have to look forward to is bursitis and high cholesterol.
I remember when my mom hit the wall. She could no longer thread the needle on her sewing machine, and she had to ask one of us kids to do it. We thought we were being helpful, kind of grown-up, even. It didn’t make sense that she would feel so mournful about it. I think we even kind of teased her about it.
Now I get it. Sorry, Mom. (Oh, and you were right about raising teenagers, too.)
But we presbyopes may have the last laugh. After all, how many slackers can afford the mezzanine anyway?
Send your comments to Betsy Spethmann at [email protected]
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