I Met Taylor Swift This Past Sunday, Here’s What That Was Like

First of all, I probably need to explain I am coming at this from an angle in which I am not what most people would consider a "huge fan of Taylor Swift." I don't at all mean that in a negative way. But I have many true Taylor Swift fans in my life, I know what that entails, and I am not one of those. Though, I do think highly of Taylor Swift and she happens to be married to the tight end of the football team that I've rooted for since I was in junior high.

This past Sunday we were invited to an early morning critics group/guild screening of Toy Story 5. At this time of the year I am inundated with "for your consideration" emails. Toy Story 5 came out in theaters in June and is readily available on home media, so getting up early on a Sunday to go to Disney's corporate offices in Manhattan to watch Toy Story 5 was just not something I saw myself doing. As I started to swipe the email into my trash folder I noticed, at the very end of the visible subject line, was Andrew Stanton's name – who, of course, directed Toy Story 5, as well as Finding Nemo and Wall-E. I thought to myself, oh, what's this about? Will he be there? I am an admirer of Stanton's work and have interviewed him a couple of times over the years.

When I finally opened the full email, after reading it thoroughly, it said, "You and a guest are invited to a screening of Toy Story 5 followed by a Q&A and reception with Andrew Stanton and Taylor Swift." What? (Swift wrote and performed the song from Toy Story 5, "I Knew It, I Knew You.")

Kate, who is a big fan of Taylor Swift, also got this email and I asked her to read it. I could tell when her eyes reached the "Taylor Swift" part of the invitation. I asked if I was reading this right? We eventually concluded that, yes, we were reading this correctly. We both decided, well, looks like we will be getting up early on Sunday because we have to go to this and see what happens.

And as the title of this post already spoils, yes, we both did actually meet Taylor Swift. I do admit, it really is quite the experience and it wound up being unexpectedly emotional for me. Anyway, here's what happened...

(The Hard Pass only exists because of paying subscribers and I do need posts just for them. If you decide to become a paying subscriber, I can tell you this post is over 1600 words long, so there's plenty left.)