Custom accommodations make dream come true for Tennessee teen with rare spinal disease to see Taylor Swift in concert for the first time
TikTok/@goodentreemom
- A 14-year-old girl with a rare spinal disease will get to see Taylor Swift for her first concert.
- Nora Gooden's parents surprised her with the tickets in a video on TikTok.
- Gooden's mother, Jamie Gooden, is going "out of her comfort zone" to take Nora to the concert, a family spokesperson told The Tennessean.
A 14-year-old Tennessee girl with a rare spinal disease is getting her wish to watch Taylor Swift for her first concert.
Nora Gooden, of Knoxville, Tennessee, has spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic disorder that causes weakness and wasting away of the muscles that the body uses to move, according to The Tennessean.
Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour has featured sold-out shows across the globe since beginning on March 17, which initially prompted a meltdown among fans because of issues securing tickets late last year due to Ticketmaster's technical snafus and the tour running out of tickets.
On March 25, Gooden's parents, TJ and Jamie Gooden in a video posted to TikTok surprised Nora for her birthday with tickets to one of Swift's upcoming May concerts at Nissan Stadium in Nashville.
In the video, Jamie Gooden shows Nora the three tickets the family got for the concert, which prompts Nora to break out singing, "It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me" from Swift's song "Anti-Hero."
"Ah! It's three tickets to the Taylor Swift Concert," Nora says in the video. "Woohoo!"
Nora also got a Nashville T-shirt, a travel bag, a Taylor Swift T-shirt, and a Taylor Swift CD as part of the surprise.
According to The Tennessean, Nora's parents got their tickets the same way as everyone else, by waiting in a seemingly endless queue on Ticketmaster.
After securing their tickets in the accessible seats with a side view of the stage, Jamie Gooden said that she called Nissan Stadium and they decided to move Nora and her family to different accessible seats with a better view, the paper reported.
"They also blocked off seats around us to accommodate Nora's wheelchair," Gooden said in an email to the paper. "She lays sideways, so they made sure she would be able to see with the railing height. They have been really helpful."
A spokesperson for the family Jamie Gooden is "stepping out of her comfort zone" by bringing Nora to the concert where she could potentially be exposed to COVID-19, but she "hopes to give Nora the experience of being a normal teen" by doing so, according to the paper.