Man, Remember Paper Tickets?

I'm going to a concert in a few hours.  It was scheduled for March 2020 -- right at the start of the pandemic.  Twenty-six months later, I finally get to see these guys.  Man, this delay has to be some sort of record.

When I was looking for my ticket to the show online, I couldn't find it.  But I bought this before the pandemic, so there was a possibility that instead of an online ticket, I was sent a ticket that I could print out.  Checked my e-mail from way back and, yep, I am supposed to print it out.  Or, maybe there's a possibility that the ticket transferred to my online account, and that I can use my phone, but I have the app of AXS, the company through which I bought this ticket, and I don't see it on there.  Maybe I'm looking at the wrong place, but I'm going to assume that because they initially sold tickets for this concert before the pandemic, if you didn't have the app when you bought it (and I didn't), you can only print a ticket now.

Printing tickets ... man, that's a relic from only two years ago, huh?  I do not see any printed tickets anymore anywhere.  They're gone.  Venues tried to get people to switch to online ticketing before the pandemic to save on money.  But the pandemic and the ensuing lockdown gave those venues both the excuse of forbidding paper tickets because of the fear (largely debunked since) that the coronavirus could spread on surfaces and the time to fully implement mobile-only ticket systems.  And that is where we are.

However, if this concert that was supposed to take place back in March of 2020 issued paper tickets, and there are other people like me who don't have or couldn't find their ticket through the app, there are going to be a bunch of people, like me, whipping out these full sheets of paper with barcodes printed on them.  That would be a sight to behold.  Seeing that might even bring a tear to my eye because it would make me nostalgic for a simpler time when a virus wasn't trying to wipe out all of humanity.  And I might also weep because it may (probably?) be the last time I will ever see a concert whereby I and other concertgoers need to hand over a tangible object in order to get in.  Have to remind myself to not blink or else the moment will be gone, forever.