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Watching Britney Spears the other night and reading all the fallout from her MTV Video Music Awards fiasco, I dialed back the mental clock to September 2000, when I took my young daughter to Walnut Creek to see Britney's Raleigh concert. Here's the story that I wrote for The News & Observer, published seven years ago tomorrow. Reading it made me sad. Britney has gone from cultural icon to cultural punch line. I'd be interested in your thoughts. Below is how she looked way back when at Walnut Creek, at 18, before K-Fed and rehab. 

(Sept. 14, 2000)

RALEIGH -- It was back in February when we got seats for Britney. Ticketmaster started taking orders on a Saturday, I remember, and my daughter Hilary was after me to get out of my warm bed and get online so we would get up close at Walnut Creek.

I was, like, an hour late logging on, and by the middle of that winter morning, all that was left was on the lawn. Hilary was not pleased - yeah, and what's new? - but that was the best we could do. Britney, who wasn't on anyone's radar two years ago when she was just an opening act for 'N Sync, had gone beyond platinum. I think nuclear is the next category. There was an electronic line at the virtual box office, and we had to settle for what we could get.

But that was February, when my girl was midway between 13 and 14, and Britney was getting a lot of air time at our house.

By this week, going to see Ms. Spears seemed much less of a big deal. There wasn't much talk of it. What talk there was from Hil was of the snippy high school freshman diss variety. Britney had gotten hoochified since the snows of February, don't you know. A little skanky, if you wanted her opinion. Did you see what she did at the MTV awards? Nasty.

What-everrr, I thought. We were still going to the concert, because we (I) had $50 tied up in a pair of tix, and I didn't feel like standing on the side of Rock Quarry Road with a hand-lettered piece of cardboard, (Got 2 for Brit).

But Hilary was going to be a tough crowd. It became clearer to me why when we reached the dirt parking lot at Walnut Creek on Tuesday evening. My Hil was, at 14, probably a foot taller than the median kid on the premises.

It was disorienting. When I watched MTV, I got the impression that Britney fans were older, wa-a-y older. But then you go to a concert and you see who climbs out of the SUVs driven by parents who are at least 10 years junior to Britney's mom and dad. Many of Britney's most passionate fans haven't seen the inside of a middle school yet.

"Duh," replied Hilary when I shared this insight. "That's her main audience."

Duh, indeed. My daughter was aging out, was the deal, growing out of music like her wrists and ankles were popping out of her American Eagles.

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In the dusk of Southeast Raleigh, the thousands of green glowsticks waving around the amphitheater made me think of pistachio ice cream. It was a school night, noted a woman near me on a blanket, and the hour was approaching 9.

We were listening to a girl group called Innosense. "They're just like the Spice Girls," I said, and not in an admiring way.

"I was just thinking that," said Hil.

One of Innosense asks the crowd to call MTV's Total Request Live, get their video airtime. Britney is like the queen of Total Request.

Hilary snorted. "They aren't going to get on TRL." So there.

We listened to BBMak, a one-hit wonder. You've heard this lyric on the radio from the single "Back Here": "There's a feeling inside I want you to know/You are the one and I can't let you go." Maybe they are a year away from being the featured act; maybe they are a year away from becoming security guards back in the UK. It all depends on consumers like Hilary, which would shake me to my core if I'm Mark, Christian or Ste (short for Steven).

At this point in the concert, Hilary is consuming a strawberry smoothie, which runs $5 for about 5 cents worth of flavored slush at the Creek's food court. The crowd senses Britney is imminent, but first, this word from our sponsors, on the large video screens facing the audience. Britney is so into milk. And she gets the urge to Herbal Essence. None of this seems out of place, and I mean it.

Purple smoke erupts on the stage, and Britney suddenly appears, head-miked, surrounded by Vegas-y dancers. I am partially blocking Hilary's sight line, so she gives me a gentle shove and hands me her Tommy pullover in the same motion. On the video screen, Britney looks very blonde and great, hardly registering on the Skankometer. She has the straightest teeth in show business. Her midriff looks like she has been doing crunches.

I start thinking about a Boston Globe article I read that warned parents about Britney. "Girls under 10 don't have the cognitive equipment to decode the subtleties of Spear's messages or movements." The writer really put that in the paper.

To which I was thinking: As if.

What her fans at Walnut Creek were engaged with was a confident, athletic, accomplished teenager working her butt off. The rapport with the crowd was obvious. All the kids were singing the songs with Britney, about crushes and heartbreak, about toying with affections and being toyed with. But not in a pathological, Alanis kind of way, if you get my drift. More in the way of: "You and I, we're like so bye-bye."

Hilary is singing all the lyrics, self-conscious a little. The problem with being 14 is that sometimes you still want Happy Meals, but you don't want anyone to know.

At 10:03, thousands upon thousands of 8-, 9-, 10-, 11- and 12-year-olds are singing "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" along with Britney. Which is some bizarre stuff, because when I was preteen, "Satisfaction" was the No. 7 cut on "Out of Our Heads" by the Rolling Stones, a very out-there group that was going to overwhelm our cognitive equipment. Well, as that old French saying goes, the more things change, the more I need arch supports.

Then Britney leaves the stage. It's 10:08 in the Alltel Pavilion at Walnut Creek, by the light of my BellSouth Mobility phone. Hilary is a couple of years older than when we went to see Celine at the Dean Dome, and she knows about encores now.

"She ain't done," says Hil. And from the amps comes her trademark "Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah" that sounds like she has a coil spring for a voice box. It makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck.

It's her mega hit, "Oops! I Did It Again," with the punch-line lyric "I'm not that innocent." But she really is, and so are her fans.

We were walking out behind a mother with three little ones in tow. As she clutched and herded them, she explained the concept of the show's ending. It was like Britney left, and everyone stood up and cheered and yelled, then she came back and sang some more, and what was the deal with that? The kids weren't anywhere close to being jaded freshmen yet.

"It's like," the mother explains, "they save their best song for last." Ohhh, the kids said.

We find our car in the chaos that is Walnut Creek emptying. Hilary punches up a station, which - surprise - is playing "Oops." That won't do at all. She fiddles the dial to G105 and sings harmony to the Chili Peppers' latest edgy, dark unpleasantness about shattered dreams and fading celebrity.

Oh, Britney, how I'll miss you.