Buying Just One Ticket

I just bought a ticket for the NPR program Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, which will be here over the summer. Being both single, with no real prospects of dating, and cautions of spending right now, I ordered a single ticket to the event. There’s something both depressing and liberating about that.

Before, I would have seen the price, considered the cost of childcare, 2 tickets, the dinner, and the drive into the city to see the show, leaving the kids with someone until well after midnight, and after some unnecessary agonizing, I would have just decided it was too much trouble, and that the show would come around again, or I’d be somewhere in the future to catch up with it.

Now, I just bought a single ticket. It’s a night the kids are with their mom, and I have nothing to do anyway. It was expensive enough so that my normal optimistic purchase of a second ticket was thwarted by the fact that, a. that’s never worked out for me, and b. I can’t spend that much.

I’m not sure how I feel about going to an event alone. I grew accustomed to it many years ago, just heading out on my own, seeing movies, plays, concerts, and there’s the benefit of not having someone want to leave early, or remind my of how late it’s getting, or loving something that’s boring me silly, and then there’s the downside of, well, all those things, and the conversation on the way home.

How do you all, (ok, few, I look at the blog stats), do the whole going out on your own thing? Do you wish you had someone to go with? Are you fine with spending a night out on your own? Do you just not go, because you don’t want to sit by yourself?

Hopefully it will be a good enough show that I won’t care, but it’s still going to be a quiet, late night drive home.