Luanne and Emily's Night Out

Last night my friend and Emily and I went to see "Little House on the Prairie" at TPAC. We had a good time, even though it was a typical night out for me. Let me explain ...

We started the evening by having dinner at one of our favorite places, Demos. It started off quite well, because we found street parking that was free at 6pm. Upon our arrival at the restaurant, we were told it was a 30 minute wait. This was no problem, since we had a lot to catch up on. Fifteen minutes later, we were being shown to our table - a rectangular table for six. It seemed odd, but we took it and sat in the middle seats. Our rather frazzled waitress eventually came to our table for our drink order. I ordered iced tea and Emily asked for water and then added a cup of coffee, to which the waitress asked if she wanted lemon with that. Emily doesn't drink lemon with her coffee, so she demurred. When Wendy Waitress finally returned with our drinks, she gave Emily her water and coffee and said, "You didn't want lemon, right?" To which Emily replied, "Uh, that's fine." Sure, Wendy probably misplaced her words, but I'm not totally convinced she didn't mean lemon coffee.

Anyhow, Emily ordered the endless soup and salad, and I ordered seafood pasta salad that comes with a cup of soup, thinking Wendy would bring it all out at once. But no. First Emily got her plate of salad and I got my cup of soup. I sucked that down, and later Wendy brought out my dinner salad and Emily's bowl of soup. Again - a little odd, but it was good. By this time, it was getting close to curtain time, so off we went to the theater.

By the time we parked the car, we had ten minutes to hoof it to the play. Now, Emily has legs that are about three times as long as mine and about one third as thick as mine. So, we look like Laurel and Hardy as we're huffing up the sidewalk. But we make it to the ticket man as the announcer says it's five minutes until the curtain goes up.

Tonight was the first play in this season. We are season ticket holders and haven't been in our new seats yet, so Emily and I asked the flashlight lady for assistance to our row - time was ticking away. We found our row and started making our way to our seats, which are in the middle of the row. The closer we got to our seats, I noticed there were no empty seats. Finally we maneuvered over to where our empty seats should be, and saw that there were seven people there - a 12-year-old girl, her mother, a 6-year-old girl, a adult woman and man, and two teenage-ish girls. The mother said, "Oh, are these your seats?" I said yes, and she said that they would move over one seat to their correct seats. The adult man and woman on the other side apologized and then I noticed they were blind - complete with seeing eye dogs at their feet. They kept sitting and discussed that whomever brought them down obviously put them in the wrong seats. They continued to sit and discuss, while Emily and I are standing next to each other in the space of one seat, staring at each other, completely bumfuzzled.

Now, let me explain that Emily and I are totally passive. Ask my sister Marilyn. Once, when the three of us were eating out, Emily and I ordered steak and biscuits. When our order came, the bottoms of the biscuits were burned - black - and were as hard as rocks. Emily and I were content to scrape the charred bits off the bottom until Marilyn summoned the waiter and had another set of biscuits brought out. If she weren't there, Emily and I probably would have eaten the unburned parts and tipped the waiter extra. So, believe me when I say that in the case of our seats, we were not about to make a big deal about it.

Except that we did want to sit together. We would have offered to sit on either end of the group, but then we would have been in someone else's seats, and with my luck, those people would have shown up during the first song, raised a ruckus, and the whole production would have been stopped so the goofballs in the wrong seats could be escorted off to theater jail.

So, while the blind people held negotiations about moving seats, Emily and I just stood there, in front of the entire theater-going public, trying to figure out what to do. Of course, we didn't dare speak, because that would have been rude to say, "Do you think they're going to move?" As for me, I was thinking that the minutes were ticking away, and I didn't want to be still standing when the lights went down and have people start yelling at me to sit down. Because the only place I could sit at that point was in Emily's or Blind Lady's laps. Finally, the blind couple, the two girls, and the dogs moved down one seat. We were safely seated before the lights dimmed, and settled in for a great show.

It all went quite well until the show was over and the crowd headed for the exit. Well, everyone in the crowd but us. The blind couple stayed seated, presumably waiting for their guide to come for them after the crowd had thinned. As Emily and I got up and turned to head the other way, we noticed the twelve-year-old was sobbing into her mother's chest. We had no idea why, as the play ended on a happy note. But their combined bodies once again blocked our way out, so again Emily and I were left standing, staring at each other, trying to think of what to do. Just about the time I considered just leaping over the seats in front of me, the girl seemed to gain control, the two split apart, and Emily and I made our way back to our car.

Just another night at the theater - at least my own personal theater!
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Things that make today great: Friday boot camp, finishing Molly's Minnie skirt; pizza with the M's; new camera