“This is a long and bonng song. It just

“This is a long and bonng song. It just keeps going on...and on...and on,” I’ve chanted, much to his irritation, during the seemingly interminable instrumental riffs.

Now, as a mother, I’ve struggled to understand the things that are really important to my three sons. Their buddies have joined us on family vacations at the beach and their girlfriends have joined us at the dinner table. We’ve had the soccer team camp out in the yard overnight.

I’ve learned to love the Baltimore Orioles, the Washington Redskins, the New England Patriots, the Georgetown Hoy as and the L.A. Lakers. I read Hunter S. Thompson, Rolling Stone magazine and The Sporting News. If I couldn’t find the answer to why my son became a “Dead Head” by listening to concert tapes, then I was ready for more heroic measures. So when he offered to treat me to a ticket, I accepted.

Besides, Bob Dylan was a voice for my generation, but a voice I’d heard only on records. During the great concert era, I wras busy with other things. While my peers were trailing rock stars from Woodstock to Altamont, I was trailing toddlers from the swing set to the sandbox.

This would be my chance to discover what I’d missed two decades ago. For my husband, it would be a jaunt down memory lane, and when we mentioned our plans to friends, we found others who wanted to take that same trip. When we counted the “I-want-to-go-toos,” we needed a dozen tickets.

But this adventure almost ended before it began. The JMU senior and his brother, the VCU sophomore, announced they were going to spend the night at a ticket outlet parking lot. “That’s silly,” admonished the wise mother. “They’ve got 60,000 tickets for this thing.” I reminded him that the lawyer in our troupe of memory lane trippers had an automatic redial telephone. “Just ask him to phone in our order. We can charge the tickets. That will be much simpler.”