Swift Strangeness

Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour in Arlington, Texas, April 2, 2023, Wikipedia Creative Commons License

I am currently writing a book that centered around the strange things that have happened in my life. I completed the rough draft and I am in the process of reviewing it before I start the process of looking for a publisher. But I do have a problem - odd things keep happening to me and the book draft is already pretty big. So I thought I’d throw one of those tales that happened to me in recent years here onto the blog. It involves Taylor Swift.

No I did not meet her, although there was an encounter so to speak. I live in Arlington Texas and at that atrocious stadium where the Dallas Cowboys play is up the road from me. I never pay attention to sports and hate it if I’m out on errands during game day with the snarled traffic. That stadium is in the “entertainment” district of Arlington where there are several stadiums for the Cowboys, Texas Rangers, various soccer events, and concerts. There’s even a Esports Stadium for electronic gaming events. When two events are happening at the same time, traffic is even worse.

I’m also located not far from Arlington Municipal Airport, which has a surprising amount of flights in and out daily. In addition to the usual individual small plane ownership thing, there are multiple flight schools, an aircraft repair and maintenance facility, and a small jet company. Normally if there is a big event like a Cowboys game there are a lot more private jets flying in and out, so I don’t even have to check online to see if some stadium event is going to snarl traffic. But possibly the biggest event ever was in 2023 when Taylor Swift played three shows at the football stadium. There were not a bunch of private jets flying in for that, or at least any more than usual. And as a prog metal head I don’t follow Taylor Swift, so I had no clue.

I head out of my neighborhood to run a quick errand, I judged I had just enough time between meetings to get the errand completed. But before I could turn onto the main street, I was stopped by a motorcycle policeman who parked directly in front of me. It was a part of a police escort. Fine, I will back up and head out of the neighborhood using a back way. But someone had pulled up behind me so I was stuck. After a minute or so a few stretch limos drove by with police escort, and the policeman finally moved on. Great. What celebrity or high-ranking politician was in town, and what was the stadium event they were going to? I looked online and saw it was Taylor Swift and she was doing three nights in a row at AT&T Stadium. Shit. She had arrived a day early for I guess soundchecks and whatnot. Okay, I noted the concert times and tried to map out when I could venture out of the house in the stadium direction over the next few days and avoid the crowds. And yes, I was in fact a couple of minutes late to my next meeting.

The next day at lunchtime I was heading downtown with my dog Dahlia to a dog-friendly coffee shop called Inclusion (a great place with great people). It was clouding up and a glance at the weather app said it was going to rain as a band of precipitation was heading towards downtown as well. So I figured I had time to get there before the rain started. Out of the neighborhood and I reached the spot where I was going to turn left, but nope. Taylor had other plans.

The crowds were not there on the street as the show was for the evening so I thought I’d be good - especially since I wasn’t near the areas that get all the traffic at the stadiums. However I was stopped yet again at the last minute from making a left turn by a police escort who showed up with a stretch limo. Again the motorcycle cop stopped directly in my path, so I was pissed off as I had to wait for the escorted limo to pull up and slowly turn through the intersection. This time I rolled down the window, hand held high, giving Taylor Swift the finger. The cop, who was no more than 5 feet from me, turned towards me and saw what I was doing. He started laughing, and said “I don’t think she can see you.” I replied with “Fine, whatever. I feel good about it.” I kept my finger up the entire time, and the cop continued to chuckle.

What really pissed me off was that by the time I got near Inclusion it started sprinkling. We still headed in as Dahlia was her usual excited self and was running back and forth awaiting the pup cup opportunity, and as we ran inside it changed from a sprinkle to a downpour. We managed to get pretty wet by the time we got in the door. I had my chai and she had her pup cup, and we sat there trying to dry off and wait for the rain to pass before we headed home. I did explain in detail to Dahlia what I thought of this Taylor Swift situation, but she didn’t care - she had her pup cup.

I guess the strange part for me was both times the cop on the motorcycle stopped directly in front of my car, prevented me from turning, Taylor drove by, and I was late to my destination.

A few days later the shows were over. The other ritual Dahlia and I had was the daily early morning sunrise visit to Starbucks on the way to one of the local parks for an early morning walk. The fave Starbucks we frequent is a few blocks from the Arlington airport, and as I pulled into the parking lot, guess who was there in her stretch limo? This time no police escort, but an assistant was just walking up to the limo with several drinks, the back door opened to let in the assistant as I drove by, and there she was - Miss Tay Tay reaching for her drink as I headed past for the drive-thru. No flipping off anyone this time, as it occurred to me she was heading to the airport and thankfully someone decided no police escort was needed. My way was not blocked.

Up at the drive-thru I asked the baristas (whom I pretty much know all of them by name) if they saw the limo, and a couple of them had. “Well then you missed Taylor Swift.” They of course went ballistic insane crazy. After I had my tea it was off to the park, and a few minutes later during the walk I heard the familiar roar of a small private jet take off, and I looked up and Taylor Swift and company were heading out to I guess the next stop on the tour.

And so ends my tale of Taylor Swift, her limo, and the police. Like I said, one of several recent tales of something odd I didn’t include in my book, but here you go nonetheless. This one was by comparison rather tame compared to a lot of the book content, but if you like stories of odd encounters and general weirdness (a rough summary of some of the tales can be found here) the rough draft is currently called Strange Luck, and with any luck it will be out within a year.