What’s better than an all-day event of feel-good music, art vendors, delicious food trucks and quality solitude time? Nothing, really. The ability and freedom one experiences by venturing out on their own to explore would normally be an introvert’s worst nightmare; however, in my case, it was everything but.
Attending the Coral Skies Music Festival on my own was sort of like my own “rite of passage” stepping out into independency and adulthood as a young woman.
A few days leading up to the festival, besides the heavy anticipation that I was feeling being able to finally see one of my favorite bands, Bombay Bicycle Club, I still felt a bit unsure going by myself. After informing family who couldn’t come with me that I would be attending all by my lonesome self, their reactions were of both concern and excitement for me.
Come Saturday morning, I arrived at the MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheater in Tampa.
“Well there’s no going back now,” I thought to myself as I got out of my car and walked over to the fairly small line that was waiting for the gates to open shortly. After a couple minutes of standing there, two girls got in line behind me. One asked if this was the line for Meet-and-Greets. I had little clue as to what she was talking about when two other girls overheard and joined the conversation.
We all continued to talk about the line-up of 12 bands that were to perform, which ones we were most excited to see, and where we were from. After finding out that one of them also came by herself, we decided it would be best if we stuck together throughout the festival. This made it easier to save each other’s seats if one of us wanted to get food, take a bathroom break or just walk around to explore.
When the gates finally opened, my new festival-friend and I walked around to check out all the vendors to kill time. At one point, we ended up meeting a band we’ve never heard of called Wild Cub, out of sympathy because there weren’t many people lined up to see them. But hey, we might’ve just met the next big indie group. Suffice to say that I was really enjoying myself and I wasn’t alone in the process.
Having spent a good eight hours with a complete stranger may sound a little suspicious, but she seemed like a cool chick with no alarming intentions. As we sat in our seats, we mostly people-watched (because that’s what you do at a music festival), but we also chatted about life, school and other miscellaneous things, like how she thought she was hanging out with a 22- or 23-year-old the whole time. I’m 18, so that boosted my ego slightly. We hit it off pretty well. There is something about spending a whole day with a stranger that you will maybe never see again that easily made my festival experience ten times better than I ever expected. So, I thank you, festival-friend Debbie.
Though my day ended up being spent with company, I was welcomed with open arms into the not-so-daunting world of freedom and independency – and I gladly accepted.
