Cheetah mamas and their girls

Erika, her friend, Carissa, and I had a Cheetahlicious good time Wednesday night at the Xcel Energy Center.

We went to the Cheetah Girls concert and from what I could see, the entire audience was made up of moms and their daughters, some as young as 3 or 4, dressed in leggings and cheetah prints. And I'm talking about the Cheetah moms AND their daughters, many of whom were wearing matching cheetah clothing. Yikes.

Vanessa Hudgens, the female lead in High School Musical, was supposed to be the opening act but the girls were so excited that in her place were Aly and A.J. (And if you don't have a preteen daughter or a guilty pleasure of watching the Disney Channel , you probably have no idea who I'm talking about.) Erika and Carissa knew all of Aly and A.J.'s songs and had a great time singing and dancing along.

When the audience would scream or cheer, it was like 50,000 school girls were yelling in unison on the playground. Pretty funny, but sweet, too. It was nice to see all these young girls at a G-rated highly entertaining performance. (Unlike the Gwen Stefani concert, which Erika and I enjoyed, but where we had a long row of girls under the age of 10 seated behind us singing along to "This shit is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S." That seemed a little inappropriate.)

Erika and I have been to a few concerts together in the past year. In addition to the Black-eyed Peas/Gwen Stefani concert, we've been to see Sara Evans, Jessica Andrews, SheDaisy, SuperChick, and maybe one or two others I can't remember.

Until I moved to Nashville when I was 20, I hadn't seen many musical performances live so it was fun when I got the internship at the "Nashville Now" show, formerly on TNN. Every night for a year I was able to watch celebrities and entertainers perform, which was great for a small-town girl like me.

While for a long time I thought concerts were sort of a waste of money, a 5-year-old girl named Mariah and her dad, Scott, taught me otherwise.

When Erika and I went to the Jessica Andrews concert in Walker last summer, we ended up sitting right next to Scott and Mariah, whom I've known for many years but not very well. Scott had lost his wife, Mariah's mom, to a brain tumor about six months before the concert and I told him how sorry I was about him losing his wife and that I hoped they were doing well. His wife had been ill for quite some time, since Mariah was 2, I believe.

He told me that he and Mariah had been going to many, many concerts together from Barney the purple dinosaur (Mariah's favorite) to jazz concerts with no words (Scott's favorite, Mariah couldn't stand them, she told us) since around the time that his wife got sick.

He said doctors told him that live music released endorphins in your brain, making you feel good. So concerts were their own version of therapy, to help them both get through losing Mariah's mom.

It was touching, too, to see little Mariah snuggled in on her dad's lap, clapping along and smiling, as she watched the show.

So even though it seemed a bit silly to see those moms dressed in cheetah prints at Wednesday's concert, I soon found myself thinking of Mariah and her dad, wondering if they were out there somewhere in the Xcel Energy Center, and hoped if they were, that she was having a cheetahlicious good time, too.