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Helping You Get the Most Out of Your Misery
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HAIRSHIRT Helping You Get the Most Out of Your Misery |
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Saturday, March 15, 2008I'm Too Tall!
Wow. Parent-teacher conferences were apparently so traumatic that I was unable to type for two days.
Actually, they were pretty uneventful. As I've said time and time again, very few parents' first thought when walking into the school is, "I've got to make sure I get in to see the theater teacher." So yeah. Quick story: Today, my wife and I went to see our friend/neighbor, who's a dancer with the Paul Taylor Dance Company. They do amazing work, even if--like me--you're an utter retard whose knowledge of the art of dance extends no further than understanding the phrase "Step, ball-change." (And the odds are pretty good that I'm not even spelling that right. I'm lame.) Anyway, we got there a few minutes late, because that's what we do. So, as the show had started, we could not be shown to our excellent seats and had to watch the first piece from the late-arriving-morons section in the balcony. Even these seats aren't bad, and it's right around where we've always sat when we've seen the company before. After the first piece was done, and I'd applauded so loudly that the poor, fragile late-comer sitting next to me had felt the need to cover her delicate little ears, we were free to wander down to our real seats, which were a few rows from the front. I hadn't ever realized this, but people going to see a dance performance act in the exact same way as people going to see a baseball game. They feel free to upgrade their seats to the better seats around them if it doesn't look like the rightful owners are going to show. This had happened as we'd been sitting in the balcony and we were forced to shoo an old lady out of our paid-for spot. She was a bit grumpy about it. She had to wake up the guy who'd been sleeping in the aisle seat one row behind us so that she could return to her proper spot. After he'd been roused from his slumber, the two of them spent a bit of time loudly discussing how rude it was of us to take our seats back. The formerly sleeping man said, "Jeez, look how big this guy is! I can't see a thing." The old lady commiserated, "Yeah, neither can I." Now, people, I'm not even six feet tall. If I'm blocking someone's view, it's because they're slumped way the fuck down in their seat and don't want to be bothered to sit up a bit. This seemed to be the case, as the formerly sleeping man refused to stand up to allow a couple returning from intermission to pass. He explained his reasoning to the old lady thusly: "Well, I went to [mumbly, inaudible]. They had, y'know, they had whiskey. And I had a lot to eat. I need to rest!" Which seems to me to be an excellent reason to make people climb the fuck over your legs. The old lady, meanwhile, stood up to see if there were any other seats she could swipe that didn't have a virtual giant sitting in front of them. As she made her visual survey, she was holding onto her purse and coat, both of which were repeatedly ramming my wife and I in the face. Now, I've got a high tolerance for this sort of thing. A little facial bruising doesn't faze me. But my wife is more sensitive in this area. So she tapped the lady's arm and informed her that she was doing bodily harm to strangers. To which the lady responded, "Oh. Well, I can't see behind me." This didn't even slightly address her culpability in my wife's new injuries, but it seemed to satisfy the old lady's conscience. Eventually, the old lady sat back down, resigned to her lot in life and the formerly sleeping man became the currently sleeping man and we watched the rest of the performance in peace. Until curtain call, when the once-again-formerly sleeping man decided to skip applauding so he could grab his coat and beat the crowd out the door. Now, other people might have been pissed off at these inconsiderate douchenuggets. I just thought it was cool that someone saw me as tall.
Comments:
I can't wait until the "surly old person" torch is passed to me.
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After years of putting up with surly old people, we will have rightly earned our crankiness. And this, oh tall one, is what is what the elders refer to as "the circle of curmudgeons"
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