Reason to remember the Friday the 13th that fell this December I shall have not. (Hey, a new Star Wars movie is opening! We should all find reasons to talk like Yoda!) But the Friday the 13th that fell in December of 1985, I’ll never forget.

In geometry class on Monday, Dec. 9, 1985, the teacher, Mr. Ramalho (who always had huge halos of sweat in the underarms of his shirts, even in morning classes), announced that a test would loom on Friday, Dec. 13. “Don’t worry,” he reassured us as class wound up. “Friday is a long time away.”

Never were truer words spoken, I sighed in my 15-year-old mind. Friday seemed an eternity away. As Mr. Ramalho had been droning, I had been drawing – the Rush logo in my notebook. Nothing was more important to me at this stage in my life than finally attending a rock concert.

Mrs. Gillespie in ninth-grade biology spoke ominously of these events. “The music is hundreds of times louder than it needs to be!” she cried. Then she made some comment about permanent hearing loss. By then I was tuned out. Music HUNDREDS of time louder? I fantasized about the guitars and drums rattling every fiber of my being.

At my tender age, I’d already made several efforts to fulfill this life goal. I had pleaded with my parents to take me to Van Halen in 1984. “No,” was my mom’s categorical response. I had tried to rally my father’s interest in a road trip to Syracuse, where Springsteen just happened to be playing. “You’re insane,” my dad laughed as we played Pac-Man together.

Realizing that their peach-fuzz-skinned son’s quest to attend a concert was the equivalent of a quest for the Holy Grail, my parents finally wavered. For my birthday in 1985, I received a pair of tickets to the Dec. 13, 1985, Rush concert in Worcester, Mass., along with a promise that I could get a coveted concert T-shirt – as long as Dad was my companion for the event. I was delirious with anticipation. I was going to attend a rock concert. I was going to stride the halls of Chelmsford High proudly wearing an actual rock concert T-shirt. It was really going to happen.

But then Massachusetts weather intervened. Friday the 13th started out as just a cold winter day. But by afternoon the snow started to fall, not gently mind you, but like God Himself hurling snowballs from the heavens, crying, “Ben, you thought you were going to a rock concert?!? Well, Mrs. Gillespie and I have other plans!”

Mom arrived home after me that afternoon. “I almost went off the road!” she gasped. Normally I would have consoled my mom. This day I grabbed the concert tickets, ran to my bedroom, and bawled into my pillow. When you reach adulthood, isn’t it amazing what constituted a catastrophe when you were 15?

I was still sobbing on my pillow when Dad returned home early from work and knocked on my bedroom door. “We should leave early, Ben,” he said. “The weather’s pretty bad. I’m just going to change.” Off he pattered down the hall.

I leaped from my bed, instantly transformed from despair to ecstasy. Mom, Dad and I stood in the family room as Mom voiced the words I dreaded to hear. “Do you really think you should go in this?” I gulped, but the decision had been made. “We’re going,” Dad said.

Out the door, and into the raging blizzard we went.

My dad drove a brand-new Buick Somerset Regal with an ultra-modern digital display so much more impressive than the analog displays of previous cars we had owned. Unfortunately, although the car was only 3 months old, the dashboard display functioned only intermittently. Unintelligible green squiggles would suddenly fill the screen where the speedometer, odometer and clock readings had appeared only moments before. Dad had figured out how to fix this malfunction when it occurred, however. He would clench his fist and punch the screen.

“Are we even moving?” Dad grimaced as we crawled down I-495. Whack! He hit the dashboard. “We’re going 14 miles an hour!” he exclaimed, as the snow assaulted us like missiles. “I bet they’re not even going to play,” he grunted. “Not in this.”

Not a vacant seat could be found in the Worcester Centrum that night. I couldn’t speak the next day, having apparently believed that Geddy Lee couldn’t have made it through the concert without my vocal help (from my perch in Section 212 of the balcony).

No snow fell when Dad and I emerged from the arena that night, me proudly carrying a “Power Windows” T-shirt that cost more than my ticket. The ride home was uneventful. Others who drove the roads of Massachusetts that night were not so fortunate.

Many years later, as a lawyer, I represented the interests of a woman who suffered catastrophic injuries in a horrific motor vehicle accident in Massachusetts on Dec. 13, 1985. I shuddered when I first reviewed that file and saw the date of the accident. No sane person would have driven the roads of Massachusetts that night, but my dad did, because of his love for me.

Poetically, the last concert my dad and I would attend together was Rush at the TD Garden on Oct. 24, 2012. “Was this the best concert we ever attended?” he grinned at me as we left the arena. “No, dad, I think it was the first one.”

(Benjamin T. King is a Concord resident and a partner in the Concord law firm Douglas, Leonard & Garvey, P.C.)