By Laura Marie Scoggins
Back during my middle school years I was a huge Shaun Cassidy fan. My bedroom was plastered with posters including the ceiling. I had all the latest issues of Tiger Beat and Teen Beat. I sat in front of the TV each week in anticipation for the next episode of the Hardy Boys. I had all of his albums. I knew all of his songs. Needless to say when I found out Shaun Cassidy was coming to my town I was beside myself with excitement.
I remember the day my mom and I stood in line for tickets. Somehow we managed to get center stage third row seats. I was one happy girl! The night of the concert my mom and dad took a friend and I to the concert. In anticipation of the show starting people left their seats and rushed to the stage. My mom rushed up with them so she could get good photos and ended up right in front up against the barricade. The entire section between the first row of seats and the barricade was packed. The aisles were packed. The rest of us on the floor were standing on our chairs so we could see. Standing on my chair in the third row center stage I had an awesome view. Meanwhile, my mom was dead center stage up against the barricade getting quite beat up as the crowd pushed behind her smashing her into the barricade.
The music began to play. The lights began to flash. By this time we had all screamed to the point where we had almost lost our voices and the show hadn’t even begun. There was a large white paper hoop in the middle of the stage. Suddenly Shaun began to sing. You could see his silhouette behind the white paper hoop dancing and singing. The crowd was going wild. All of a sudden Shaun jumped through the paper hoop and my mother caught his landing in the photo I have posted. There was no zoom on that photo. It was taken on a cheap old Kodak camera. I have not edited the photo. That’s how close my mother was to Shaun Cassidy. She caught his landing through the hoop on film. I had so many awesome photos from that concert. A whole scrapbook full, but somehow over the years this is the only photo from that night that has survived.
Later in the concert Shaun started throwing red roses into the audience. After he had held them a while, put them around his neck, and done various things with them (um…best probably not to ask). Being third row center stage standing on chairs we were right in the path of his rose throwing. My dad was 6’4″ so standing on a chair third row center stage he had a huge advantage over all those little teeny bopper girls. He was able to reach up and catch one of those roses. My dad was immediately swarmed by teeny bopper girls trying to grab that rose. My sweet Daddy put that rose down his shirt to keep it safe. Then moments later another rose came our way and once again my Daddy reached up over the heads of teeny boppers and snagged another rose for my friend who had come to the concert with us. Both my friend and I ended up with a rose that night. My dad kept those roses in his shirt, thorns and all, throughout the whole rest of the concert, walking out of the stadium, on the drive home, and it wasn’t until we got home that he finally unbuttoned his shirt and took out the roses. They were slightly crushed. The stems were broken. Actually Shaun had done that while he was dancing with them. But all in all they were in great condition. I had that rose pressed in a scrapbook for years until it was so crumbled and falling apart that you just couldn’t keep it anymore.
The awesomeness didn’t stop there though. The next day they had a contest in our local newspaper where you could send in a registration to win Shaun Cassidy’s autograph. A few days later we received a phone call that I was one of the five winners! Can you imagine the excitement of my seventh grade self?! We had to go down to the newspaper office to pick up my prize. All of the winners got to have their picture taken for an article about the concert for the newspaper.
I have to say this is one of the most exciting memories from my childhood years. I was going through a scrapbook recently and came across these photos. The only two photos remaining of this memory. I can’t even find the autograph after all these years. I’ve written a lot about my childhood and all of the pain. My dad was passive and my mother was extremely difficult. My childhood wasn’t easy. There have been so many times when I’ve questioned their love through my healing process. But then I opened an old scrapbook. Turned the pages and came across these photos and as a mother and grandmother myself recognized the love of a mother who would rush to the front of the crowd and take a beating against a barricade for the entire length of a concert so she would be in a good position to take great photos for her daughter. My mom came home banged up and bruised that night. Then I am reminded of the scratches on my dad’s chest when he took off his shirt. They were scratches from the thorns from the hours he kept the roses safely hidden for his daughter and her friend. It was proof of a mom and dad’s love. The realization brought me to tears.
After all the posts about my childhood, the pain, the wounds, and all of the healing I have struggled to achieve it took an old dusty memory and Shaun Cassidy’s rose to provide the evidence that yes….my parents really did love me.
