The Untouchability of a Stranger Things
If you are of the “tween” set, or parents-of, you would have to have lived under a rock not to have heard of the NETFLIX hit, Stranger Things. One of its young breakthrough stars from its ensemble is Finn Wolfhard, a dark haired fresh-faced newly knighted prince of today’s emerging Hollywood royalty.
Our daughter is the bullseye of Finn’s target market. She is 12 years old and has watched both seasons of Stranger Things to the point of lip syncing both seasons and figured out its theme song on the piano - a repetitive flurry of fingers each time she passes its keyboard. Many of her Christmas presents this year are Finn-themed and her greatest hope is to meet him in person someday. Or, at least breathe the same air. Of all things Finn, the biggest draw for our girl was discovering that he actually had a band named Calpurnia. A friend of hers heard something about a Los Angeles performance.
Our girl is not alone. Millions of young people seem to have contracted this sort of Finn-itis, a gradual inflammation of the heart caused by the mere site or mention of Finn’s name. Our home just happens to feel as though we could very possibly be, ground zero. As this ever-expanding patient population grows, millions more parents watch helplessly as their children wish upon this star to somehow, some way, point in their direction, and even more parents are trying anything they can to make this happen.
I Google for fan conventions or celebrity appearances for the cast of Stranger Things. We live in Los Angeles, who knows, right? Nothing comes up. It is Christmas, I remind myself. The schedules for next year’s Comicon etc. probably aren’t even finalized. Then I remember Finn’s band. A few more Googles leads me to its name I had mistakingly remembered as Cornucopia. Calpurnia, evidently, was the name of Julius Caesar’s third wife as well as a genus for ‘a noble family’. Thank you, Internet.
Again, my search results in nothing. Trying another zip code, the idealism of a few hours of driving with my daughter strikes a tone. We could bond, she will tell me secrets and we will laugh. That is why we do these things, right? Moms, we try. We try so hard to create that memory, that moment our child will forever hold as the time I met my mom.
I see it. Calpurnia is playing in New York. Three thousand miles away, the fantasy of being the type of people who could whisk their child across the country for one special night quickly clicks to reality as the right column fills the screen. As if the inability to buy plane tickets wasn’t enough,
the cost per-ticket for a General Admission is $600.
I understand ticket pricing is traditionally based upon supply and demand - there is but one Finn Wolfhard, and millions in demand. For a talented young man at what may be his peak, with a management team most likely accounting for the uncertainty of the industry regarding a young actor’s longevity, I can understand wanting to strike while the iron’s hot. But as a mother of four, it is yet another reminder of how out of reach our children’s idols of the day can make seem especially during a time when families are struggling and the future uncertain, even in our dreams.
Even if we lived in New York, the cost for us to take our daughter and a friend to see Finn’s band would be more than half the equivalent of her teacher’s net monthly income.
I am not exactly sure why I decided to put down, type up and post the gymnastics of my mind. Perhaps it is simply venting, or most likely just me being a mom at Christmastime wondering how the world keeps seeming to slip its roots. How did something that should be accessible for such a young fan base become this untouchable implausibility? For now, I will wrap for her the art-poster from Etsy with Finn and his friends on their bikes, an ironic image of relatability in this world of ever stranger things.