Two (Discount) Tickets to Paradise

I'm (not-so-secretly) obsessed with Eddie Money -- is there a better song than "Baby Hold On" or song/video than "Shakin'"? -- so when a 30ish female coworker of mine made an Eddie reference a few weeks ago, I knew I'd found my soul mate. Inspired by the warm wave of nostalgia, I did a quick search on Ticketmaster -- could anything be more fun than seeing Eddie live, we both agreed -- and freakily enough, he was coming to B.B. King's in Times Square a couple weeks later. Jump to this morning, when my partner in crime sent me this Groupon for the show. That I had FRANTICALLY pulled out my credit card and bought the tickets last month -- convinced that the show would sell out in minutes -- made us laugh, although I was strangely not that upset with myself.

Although this offer and the previous one for Dahmer Tours have convinced me that Groupon has great taste, my lifetime aversion to "coupons" and "deals" is still strongly instilled in me. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm wealthy. (Journalists rank No. 1 in lowest-paying careers for college graduates when last I looked.) But whatever possible savings can be garnered by one of these savings schemes cannot possible be outweighed by the shame and humiliation of the other 99 times out of 100 when it turns out the offer "doesn't apply," "is expired" or whatever other bullshit excuse they have to not honor your sad attempt at saving a few cents. (Read: These things NEVER work out for me.) Even this weekend this rule is in play: A friend has been planning for weeks to come to the city from Philly to see "End of the Rainbow." After originally looking to buy tickets for the Saturday show, a Broadway-savvy friend who is also going suggested we get seats through TDF, something I'd never heard of. I was leery, but since he does this all the time, I figured why not, he knows what he's doing. Well, when that didn't pan out (none of us realized the show has been in previews and this is the opening weekend), he suggested we go to TKTS tomorrow. While this may very well pan out -- or not, it is opening weekend, and will we be able to get seats together? -- it just reconfirmed my belief that I'd rather pay more, and be sure to get what I want.

When I tried to think of where this grossly un-American, not-after-a-deal mentality might have come from, it suddenly came back to me. I was in 9th or 10th grade when my entire family made a trip to Pizza Hut for dinner, a place we rarely went to. After my stepfather ordered the large pizza, the guy working there gleefully informed my parents that they were having a special -- and all you had to do was create your own coupon, by writing "MAKE IT A LARGE, MEDIUM CHARGE" on a piece of paper. My excruciatingly cheap deal-loving stepfather was thrilled, then looked at my mom, knowing she likely had paper and a pen in her purse. I vividly remember how my mom recoiled, sighed, then said to the kid, "Can't you just charge us for a medium?" The kid laughed nervously -- I'm guessing this hadn't happened before -- then said that he needed the "coupon" for his paperwork at the end of the night. At this point my tolerance-free mom had had enough, and said: "Just charge us for a large." I was thinking the exact same thing.