Good seats

Busy weekend with the in-laws. Dinner out Friday night, Galveston trip on Saturday and Sunday night we saw the musical “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”. I loved this movie as a child and seeing the stage version was a real treat. Jacob told just about anyone who would listen that cars can’t really fly. I think maybe we’ve failed him on developing the whole imagination thing.

I looked over at one point in the show and Bill appeared to be asleep, or “resting his eyes” as he tells it. That’s fine though. This coming from the man who, upon going to see his first musical ever, CATS (a thoughtful wedding gift from my cousin Betty), declared to me after it was over…“it was pretty good, lot of singing and dancing though.” Kind of the point I told him…kind of the point.

He’s come a long way since then. More musicals together than we could count….Les Mis, Phantom, Jersey Boys, Jekyll and Hyde to name a few. We even bought season tickets a few years ago. We thought all the shows looked good and that it would make a good date night.

Our season tickets were up just about as high as you could go, the nosebleed section if you will. When we were seeing the show “Westside Story”, we ran into some friends during intermission. They said their entire row was empty and was just a few rows back from the stage.

“Come join us!” they said.

And so we went.

And it was amazing. Everything was so different that close to the stage. Not only could you see the actors faces, you could see their facial expressions. Everything was clearer, brighter….and well … louder.

Because you see, when the scene came where there was a gunshot, I screamed as if I had been the one to take the bullet myself. Screamed so loud in fact that the actors on stage got tickled while all the rows around me (including a now NOT sleeping Bill) were in hysterics. I’m pretty sure I ruined the whole moment for the entire theater.

We laughed through the rest of the show, I slunked out to the car and vowed to never, ever sit that close again.

Which is a good thing, because tonight in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang…well, that car backfires. And I’m sure down there by the stage it was loud. But I handled it just fine from where I sat….and Bill, well he probably slept right through it.