Free Reaching Out to the Stars by Donna DeMaio Hunt Page B

for someone to make me feel better about what was going on in my head. As she was going through a different time in her life, I felt that we were in different places and that we no longer had the same things in common. Her tone made me feel like she did not really want to be bothered talking about something so beneath her.
    When I started to talk about the new season of American Idol, a show which she initially got me interested and involved in, she immediately turned the conversation in a different direction with her quick response of, “I don’t really watch that any more because Brad doesn’t watch it.” I truly believe that she boycotted the show midway through season four when the love of her life, Constantine Maroulis, was voted off prematurely. Now that I think about it, I remember how steaming mad she was. She did say she was never watching the show again.
    As I knew I was on my own with this one, I then started to try to justify things myself and came up with ten reasons why what was going on in my head was okay:
           1.  Billy John & Katie Lee — 32-year age difference
           2.  Catherine Zeta Jones & Michael Douglas — 25-year age difference
           3.  Donald Trump & Melania Knauss — 24-year age difference
           4.  Harrison Ford & Calista Flockhart — 22-year age difference
           5.  Tom Cruise & Katie Holmes — 16-year age difference
           6.  Demi Moore & Ashton Kutcher — 15-year age difference
           7.  Seal & Heidi Klum — 11-year age difference
           8.  Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie — 11-year age difference
           9.  Mariah Carey & Nick Cannon — 10-year age difference
         10.  Jim Carrey & Jenny McCarthy — 10-year age difference
    Need I say more? After all, age is just a number.
    Where normal everyday people would get looked at with disapproval for this, celebrities easily get away with dating outside of their generation with no questions asked.
    As each week passed, I began downloading the newest song to a CD. I figured that if he did not get a recording contract that I would at least be able to have a CD with as many songs as I could get until he got voted off the show. I must have trashed at least six CDs by the end of it all. I guess that I could have just waited until it was the end for him and downloaded them all together, but that was not even an option because I looked forward to having that new song to add to the group to listen to in the car that following week. My new idol made it to the number four spot, allowing my final CD to contain twelve songs, twelve bucks well spent on iTunes.
    I also went onto the American Idol website and downloaded some pictures so that I could make my own personal CD cover and label. I put a picture of my new favorite on my cell phone as a screen saver. I tried to get Bryce to download one of his songs from the show as a ring tone but none of them were available. At the end of it all, I somehow ended up being a member of laughaholics, some funnies that somehow get texted to my phone every day. I cannot seem to get rid of it.
    It had been five years since I had attended an American Idol concert. Although I had been tuning in every year, as I said, I was never really interested enough to actually get myself to buy tickets for a show. Then, American Idols Live was to be held at The DCU Center.
    When it came the morning for tickets to go on sale, I had been away from the computer and realized the night after, oh shit… the tickets. I ran downstairs hoping that I could still get good seats, which was a very unrealistic thought. There were only crappy seats left and I was determined to get the best seats I possibly could without spending a crazy amount of money. I went to some ticket broker sites online. To get decent seats, it was one hundred forty five dollars a ticket, more than twice the original face value. I felt that if I was going to spend sixty