Fate Part 1: The Twitter Beginnings

Fate, or destiny, is defined as a predetermined course of events. Before this year, I thought fate was a bunch of hog wash. The term "everything happens for a reason" was just something I thought people said to make themselves feel better. Over the course of the next few blog posts, I will be telling some stories that now have me convinced that everyone has their own destiny.

Last year, sometime around January or February, I got an email saying one of my friends was following me on twitter. Now that doesn't seem out of the ordinary, but I had forgot I even had a twitter account. I had made an account when twitter first came out to check it out, but it was boring to me and I never even used it. I realized my twitter picture was of my ex-girlfriend and I so I logged in to twitter to switch that, because that is just awkward. While I was on there, I decided to send a tweet for fun to the friend that had just followed me. She ended up tweeting back to me and saying, "twitter is fun you would like it, i have like 100 followers!" So every couple days I would just log on and send her a tweet and I tried to get myself to like it. I ended up searching around twitter and started following sports and music figures that I enjoy. One night a local Boston sports radio station said whoever had the best tweet during the game would win Celtics tickets. For anyone that knows the Celtics, Rajon Rondo is the point guard and is always piles up assists. I ended up tweeting to the radio station saying, "Rondo's got 99 problems but the dish ain't one." That night I got a direct message saying I had won the Celtics tickets! Right then I was immediately hooked on twitter.

Shortly after that is when I realized Stefan Lessard from my favorite band, Dave Matthews Band, was on twitter. I thought it was so cool that a member of my favorite band followed me and would interact with my fellow fans and I. Sometime in early May, I noticed on the antsmarching.org forums that my friend Berman had tweeted to Stefan. He told him that the band had played at Hartford the fifth most out of anywhere, but they had never played Halloween. I was shocked when I found out Stefan actually answered him and said he planned on letting the band know. I decided to tweet to Stefan, asking him to play minarets at Mansfield. Minarets is a favorite song of mine that I had never seen and hadn't been played at Mansfield in over 10 years. At this time I only had probably fifty followers, most of them being fake porn websites, and none of them being fellow DMB fans. I went onto the Mansfield thread on antsmarching.org and started asking my fellow fans to follow me on twitter and help with the minarets campaign. Slowly but surely I started getting my first DMB family followers on twitter. The minarets for Mansfield campaign gained a little steam as more people tweeted to Stefan. The DMB shows at Hartford happened and they then the second night actually played Halloween. Although this just could've been a coincidence, it gave me hope that minarets could actually happen.

The time came for Mansfield night one and I had pit tickets. I made a sign that said "#Minarets4Mansfield" and below that I wrote "What You See Is Human" with an arrow pointing down at me. I had told people I would be wearing my blue DMB fire dancer hat and my Garnett Celtics jersey, my go to DMB concert attire. It was the first time I was at a show and have fellow fans recognize me and say hi, it was awesome. One guy came up to me and he had come down from New Hampshire all by himself. His name was Kevin and we had known each other from the antsmarching.org forums. I told him to come hang out with my friend and I and we all enjoyed the show. I was stage left right in front of Stefan, and he definitely saw the sign. The night ended without them playing Minarets but it was an awesome show and I wasn't disappointed. The next day I got to the parking lot with my friends for the second Mansfield show. They had a merchandise tent outside the venue so I went to go get a poster so I didn't have to carry it all night. Sure enough the person in front of me in line for a poster was Kevin, my friend from the night before. I said hi and asked him if he came by himself again. He told me he drove down alone so I invited him to come over and tailgate with my friends and I. Although this seems like useless information, meeting Kevin becomes a huge part of my story. Even though I had good seats, I decided to hangout with all my friends in the lawn that night just to have some fun. All of a sudden the third song of the night comes on, and BAM, it is Minarets! Kevin and I ran down to the stage like 13 year old girls trying to meet Justin Beiber. Whether they played it by coincidence or not, that was a special moment for me. After that I was like WOW, anything can happen on twitter. Also, I had met some cool fellow DMB fans on twitter and I wanted to meet more! That was the beginning of the twitter madness for me and little did I know there was much more to come!

I think it is really cool some of you take the time to read my blog and enjoy what I have to say. It means a lot to me and I appreciate all the nice things you have all been saying. I will try and update it as much as possible! And feel free to edit my grammar and punctuation because I know it is horrible! Fate Part 2 will be up soon :)
-Andy