Curse of the Morton's toe

Not so long ago, I was busy changing the bed sheets and wasn’t paying attention where I placed my feet as I shuffled around the bed. Consequently, in a moment of distraction, I slammed my toes into one of the bed frame legs. Ouchee! The index-toe on my left foot, in particular.

I have one of those toe configurations where the index toe is longer than the big-thumb toe. According to that ultra-reliable source of information, Wikipedia, this skeletal configuration of the foot is known as Morton’s toe.

This is why my second toe suffered the biggest impact from that little mishap. And it was not at all a pleasant experience, I might add.

To aggravate the situation, when I stumbled out of bed at an early-early hour the next morning to let the dogs out into the back yard, I snagged the very same toe in a loose loop of the rug en-route to the back door.

Imagine that sequence of events, if you please. A somewhat rude way to wake up on a Saturday morning.

The toe swelled slightly and the skin coloring darkened, but not much. I wasn’t worried and had no trouble standing, walking, wearing shoes or doing cartwheels (kidding). In fact, I forgot about it for a few weeks.

Then another clumsiness episode occurred.

Walking across the patio, I stubbed that same particular Morton toe over the spa-control button. It’s a medium sized button about 15” from the edge of the pool that controls the spa jets, about the size of a cupcake. And gosh-darn that got me to pay attention where I was walking. Phooey! Hurt so badly it took my breath away.

Might as well make a joke about it, right? The curse of this Morton’s toe got Cristy to thinking that perhaps the solution would just be to lop it down to size. We’ve got a handy tool in the garage that could do the trick.

I’ve taken that suggestion under advisement for the time being.

National SCUD Day

In honor of this highly underrated national holiday (Savor the Comic, Unplug the Drama), let's take a moment to kick back and enjoy ourselves a little joke, shall we?

My choice. I selected something from the blonde category on http://joke-of-the-day.com/.


A blonde, wanting to earn some extra money, decided to hire herself out as a "handy-woman" and started canvassing a nearby well-to-do neighborhood.

She went to the front door of the first house, and asked the owner if he had any odd jobs for her to do. "Well, I guess I could use somebody to paint my porch," he said. How much will you charge me?" The blonde quickly responded, "How about $50?"

The man agreed and told her that the paint and everything she would need was in the garage.

The man's wife, hearing the conversation, said to her husband, "Does she realize that our porch goes all the way around the house?" He responded, "That's a bit cynical, isn't it? The wife replied, "You're right. I guess I'm starting to believe all those dumb blonde jokes we've been getting by e-mail lately."

A short time later, the blonde came to the door to collect her money. "You're finished already?" the husband asked. "Yes," the blonde replied, "and I had paint left over, so I gave it two coats." Impressed, the man reached into his pocket for the $50.00 and handed it to her.

"And by the way," the blonde added, "it's not a Porsche, it's a Lexus."

Now that is funny, mi amigos y amigas!

Summers of my memory

From Memorial Day to Labor Day, my brother and I seldom wore shoes. Hot pavement and thorny stickers were not a deterrent for our bare summertime feet. We rode our bikes everywhere and walked down the block to the community swimming pool every day. I played hopscotch on the driveway, taking great care to draw pretty course squares with colored chalk.

In the evenings, I would sit in the front yard and listen to the cicadas until past dark. Sometimes, on firefly nights, a thrilling game of hide-and-seek might occur.

Mommy made popsicles in metal ice cube trays and watermelon was plentiful along with beans, cucumbers and tomatoes from our garden behind the garage.

On the 4th of July, the annual parade consisted of a legion of kids riding spider bikes with red, white and blue streamers flying from the handlebars, followed by the fire engine from the community’s VFD and finally, a convertible coupe where the town mayor sat in the place of honor, waving to neighbors that lined the streets as the procession passed. The car was invariably adorned with a poster-sized sign on each door inscribed proudly with the phrase “Our Mayor” in boldly colored crayon.

Then, just before 9 o’clock, residents would walk a mile or so down the road to the community park and find a place to sit in the grass until the fireworks started. The volunteers manning the pyrotechnics lit the candles one by one, with a span of 10-15 seconds between each, giving the audience plenty of time to watch in amazement as the sparkles turn to ember and then to smoke.

And it was amazing. Pure magic for a young girl. I felt like skipping all the way home and probably did, swinging my mom’s hand the whole way.

Practical application of transitive equality

I was going to write this post for Tuesday (RTT), but it's way late. 3 days late. But whatever. Last time I checked, there were no rules on the internet.

Early last month Cristy had a birthday and I just am about the world's worst at finding the definitive gift. In most cases, I seem to find a little something that I absolutely adore and then think, "wouldn't so-and-so just LOVE this?" So then I purchase it and the gift recipient is left wondering what motivated me to buy this big chunky bracelet that I'm eagerly hoping to borrow when I should have known the recipient is unlikely to ever wear it.

I don't know why this happens. Projection. Lack of coffee. Who knows.

But maybe, just possibly, on this past birthday, I inched slightly closer to that divine place where I selected a gift meaningful to the recipient.

I ordered these two custom stepping stones from K-Dub Designs. They are adorable and made to order to resemble your own dog or cat. The artist behind K-Dub (Karen) is sweet and creative and so easy to work with.

Cristy LOVES mosaics. And she LOVES her two cute dogs. So, by applying the transitive property of equality in mathematical logic, it stands to reason that Cristy would LOVE the mosaic portraits of her two pups.

I think she might. I hope so, anyway.

Here they are.

A full collection will soon follow. After all, we have a house full of 4-legged companions along with the memories of those recently departed. More on that later.

Mischief

It was 6:45am Friday and I noticed several cars pulling into the parking lot of a largely abandoned shopping strip on my way to work. Then I realized they were cutting through the parking lot to zip over to the Shipley Donut shop. Thoughtful folks that they were, they were probably going to get a big box to take in for their coworkers. Or maybe not, who knows?

Regardless, it reminded me of a story that my mom likes to tell from time to time. About Shipley donuts. The best darned donuts around, if I do say so myself.

When my brother and I were young kids, my dad would buy a dozen Shipley donuts from time to time, as a Saturday morning treat. He wasn’t the type of man who would get up early on Saturday morning to drive over to the donut store to get fresh donuts. He’d buy them the night before and wrap the box in kitchen towels to try to keep them fresh. My brother and I were kids and didn’t know the difference. I guess my mom and dad just didn’t much care whether the donuts were fresh or not-so-fresh. In hindsight, this is weird, because my dad loved sweets.

Anyway, one particular Friday night, we had a box of Shipley donuts on our kitchen counter wrapped in dish towels.

The next morning, Dad awoke and made his way into the kitchen. He noticed my younger brother sitting on the floor watching cartoons. As he started making the coffee, he glanced over to the box of eagerly awaited Shipley donuts and to his surprise, only saw an empty counter. Naturally, he asked my brother where he put the donuts, thinking he had already snaked one or two from the box.

Hey, where’d you put the donuts?

What donuts?

Uh-oh.

A quick look around the house revealed an empty donut box and some kitchen towels casually tossed aside. And a family dog with an upset stomach casually sleeping it off in the laundry room. Apparently the kitty had acted as an accomplice and pushed the box to the floor for amusement.

No one else was very amused at the time, but all these years later, it is a continued source of amusement, at least for my mom, my brother and me.

Burned

What happens when you put a group of people together in a room? Someone will invariably observe that the temperature of the room is not quite comfortable; it’s either too hot or too cold. The first observation serves to open a general discussion about the less-than-comfortable conditions.

Guilty! I’m one of those people. My personal comfort zone tends to accommodate temperatures that are slightly above normal rather than temperatures slightly below normal. I don’t like being cold while I’m at work. But just two offices away, my colleague almost always has a fan blowing in her office – she’d prefer the temperature much cooler than the normal setting.

I work in an old building and have learned that while the HVAC system is tuned as much as possible to accommodate the changes to the internal space layout through the 20 or so years since it was first built, it’s just hard for the building engineers to regulate even airflow.

OK. I get it.

So I don’t complain about the temperature in my office because I realize they can’t really do that much more. Instead, I sit on a heating pad.

It’s warm. Sort of like those wonderful seat warmers that some lucky people have in their cars to keep them warm in winter. But with a twist. It is an electric appliance, and if I’m not careful the heating pad can burn my skin. Yes, there is a fabric cover over the heating pad and yes, I wear completely adequate clothing, so the heating element is not coming into actual contact with my skin.

Nonetheless, last Friday I noticed that my derriere was just particularly sensitive. So after work, when I got home, I checked it out. To my dismay, there were two bright red burn spots on my very own butt. A startling discovery.

I’m struggling to figure out the metaphor here…

Best made plans

Dogs have a way of outsmarting us humans. We make plans and execute our plans carefully. Then a dog comes along, casually sniffs out the one single deficiency, and in a nanosecond, topples the fruits of your labor, all the while wagging her tail happily.

This is the way it has been with the doggy door.

Developing a plan for restricted canine access to the dog run area of the yard throughout the work day was an essential element of our initial move-in plan. We carefully planned a location for the door, selected a contractor for the installation, planned the design for the perimeter fence around the dog run, planned for the exterior pathway leading to the door and purchased all the requisite materials.

It seemed like a reasonable plan. Dogs would have the freedom to stay indoors or outdoors during the day, would not be subjected to the risk of falling into the pool, and on lawn mowing days, we would simply pop the cover over the doggy door and they would stay safely indoors.

So we executed against the plan. Mucho time consuming. No small expense.

Flaw #1 – commercially-made doggy door covers are designed to trick humans into thinking that they are actual barriers. This assumption is false. The simple pop-on doggy door cover we have can be removed by a crafty canine in a matter of moments. It is no match for a dog with an agenda.

Flaw #2 – temporary fencing is temporary, at best. During the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, we installed some deer fencing at my old house to keep the dogs inside the yard after the back fence blew down. It was very effective as a short-term solution. We decided to take this success and expand it to a larger scale, for a longer duration, by using deer fencing to cordon off the perimeter of the dog run. However, because of the variable terrain and other factors, there were weaknesses in the fence that the dogs quickly identified. Quick, as in instantaneously. Scaled the fence, no problem. Over the subsequent months, we (and when I say we, I actually mean Cristy) have conducted countless repairs to this temporary fence to remedy each breach of integrity.

These two initial, but fatal flaws in our logic resulted in a ripple effect of downstream problems, exacerbated by our attempts to outwit our clever companion dogs with creative solutions to these problems. Each activity, consequently falling into the aforementioned mucho-time-consuming and no-small-expense categories.

The remedies seem to be the most obvious. 1. stack up some heavy things in front of the doggy door blocking access to the door. 2. get a professional to build a real fence.

OK (head hanging in embarrassment), OK.

Fencing contractor completed the work yesterday. After we return the leftover lumber to Home Depot, I can start working on getting the leftover splinters out of my hands and maybe, just maybe, put the doggy-door episodes to rest.

Too optimistic? We shall see.

Fool for love

Google is my preferred search engine at work and in life too. I love Google. I've been giving it a workout lately at the office. And today I kept noticing the word Topeka on the landing page instead of the regular word Google. The very wierd thing was that I was just doing a little bit of research on a couple of constituents that were originally from Topeka, KS. That was a surprise to me because their last known address was in Florida.

Often, Google seems to read my mind. If I enter one or two letters of a word or phrase, the search engine intuitively fills in the rest, making my job quicker and easier. Sometimes this ESP is more than a little startling, especially when I begin to search for something that falls outside the normal parameters I typically use. How does Google know what I am thinking?

But back to Topeka. I thought this word was just another improvement on the ESP feature package, but then my curiosity got the best of me. I clicked on the word and opened a silly and funy article about Google changing its name. Clearly an April fool's day joke. But clever and well executed.

I love Topeka!

Dunce hat

Today is my day to wear the dunce hat. I hate these days, but they drop into my life once in a while.

I had a dentist appointment this morning, but had forgotten the time; I thought it was in the afternoon. Thankfully I scheduled it for 8:30 and still had plenty of time to make it to the appointment after I got to work and checked the calendar. And thankfully, there were no startling discoveries as a result of this appointment that would require another more invasive dental appointment.

I left the dentist's office and returned to my car. As I backed out of the parking space I heard a loud crunching sound. It was the sound of one of those big parking garage pillars bashing in the side of my car. I don’t much care for these pesky pillars in parking garages, for precisely this reason. I have had more than one altercation with them in recent years.

My car is actually fine, as long as I don’t need to use the side-view mirror or open the driver’s side door too awfully far.

Just another reason I don’t need to be driving a big expensive car. Most of my driving mishaps tend to occur when I am backing out of a parking space. Pass me the pointed hat please.

Spa treatment

My little guy Tristan is a stinker. And I’m not talking about him being a cute little rascal either. Although he is. I’m talking about this really bad habit he has of finding stinky stuff outdoors to rub against and getting the stinky smell all in his fur. He stinks. He’s a stinker.

He did it about a week ago. When I get home from work during the week, there is usually a lot of animal activity. The dogs start running around the house and yard. Barking ensues. Toys. Sometimes the little dogs decide to give the kitty a requisite chase around the kitchen. But then it subsides and I feed them and then take a seat at the kitchen table while i get busy with some little project.

So last week I'm sitting there and noticed an unpleasant smell. I was hoping it wasn’t me, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint the source. Later, Cristy noticed it too and we both decided it was Tristan. It was not a good smell. That evening, he got the spa treatment. Shower, shampoo, blow dry. He is a furry dog, so this is a rather time consuming activity. But afterwards, he was soft and clean and sweet smelling for approximately two days.

Then he found another stinky spot outdoors and felt compelled to transfer the fragrance to his own fur. I tried a shortcut this time – a household wipe. We didn’t have any baby wipes and hey, he’s part of the household, so why not? I wiped it over the fur around his head and neck, where he likes to rub in stinky spots. It helped. Not a permanent solution, but better than nothing.

This morning as I was leaving the house, I noticed a very pronounced smell outdoors. A skunk. Undoubtedly a skunk that probably had an unfortunate encounter with an automobile at some point during the night.

So, even though my little sweetheart Tristan is indeed a stinker, there are still some creatures in the world that carry around even a bigger stink than him. By the way Tristan, your next spa appointment? Coming up soon.

Asking for what you want

Yesterday was rodeo day. Couldn't have been a nicer day. Sunny, warm and perfect. As a result, over 100,000 Houstonians joined us for the event. Just a tad bit crowded, but we adapted, like the survivors we are.

In preparation for the day, we brought along two cameras. Photo opportunities abounded. As an added bonus, some rodeo attendees added a layer of green to their already colorful cowboy attire, in honor of St. Patrick's Day.

I spotted one particular rodeo visitor among a group of her friends, purchasing a souvenir coin. She was wearing shamrock eyeglasses. I deparately wanted a photo and tried to conceal myself next to a nearby glass cabinet housing some artwork to cleverly capture to candid image. But to my dismay, she kept her face turned away from my lens.

The two guys next to me caught wind of my quest and they pulled out a camera too, with no better luck than my own. Finally, as they gave up and walked off, one of them suggested to me that I just ask her to pose for a photo.

Such a brilliant idea, and so much easier than my futile method. So I did. And she said yes. One of her friends joined in the fun and these two lovely ladies gave me one of the best photos of the day.

Why didn't I think of that?

Springing forward & looking back

With the impending time change, I am anxious for spring to burst forth. Mother Nature is gathering momentum as the earth glides on its path, ever closer to the sun.

Paging back through my book of memories, the imprints of the season emerge: patent-leather shoes, my mom’s bunny cake, dandelions, my younger brother’s little league baseball games, hydrangeas in my grandmother’s yard, laundry hanging outdoors to dry. In my school years, with the coming of spring it became customary to spend lunch breaks picnicking on the courtyard lawn, brown bags of sandwiches and apples. The warm sun and easy, uncomplicated conversations of teenaged girls. Discussing lipgloss or sandals.

I’m not so far removed from that young girl. As I entered my closet this morning, I cast my eye over to the few pairs of shoes that will certainly announce the emergence of spring. The fuscia pumps, nude patent, red-white-black polka dot strappy sandals. And lip gloss in pale sugar pink or coral bright. I selected the nude patent pumps. As a proper southern girl, I still observe seasonal wardrobe boundaries. Spring-summer garments and shoes are off-limits until Easter. Except for my little episodes of cheating, like today.

It’s a neutral though. Sort of like the Switzerland of shoes, right?

The clever canine

Living with a household of dogs is never dull. Their individual personalities have plenty of opportunities to claim the spotlight. Lately, my oldest mixed-breed, Jackie (14 years old), has been asking for more attention than normal. It might have something to do with his chronic aches and pains. Besides his daily medications, I give him massages and walk around through the house with him when he seems restless. We’ll position a space heater near him when he’s lying down for extra warmth. And there are plenty of quilts, throw rugs and towels on the floor for him to lie on in the rooms where the dogs like to sleep.

On a few occasions, we have noticed that his hind legs don’t appear to be working as they should. He demonstrates a fair amount of stiffness and appears to be uncomfortable. But the symptoms are transitory, because as a counterpoint, we also seem him trotting through the backyard and rolling about in the grass. And if someone knocks at the front door, stand back, because Jackie is first to lead the charge toward the door at top speed, tail held high, barking an alert for possible intruders.

Last week Cristy decided to conduct a little experiment. Since I leave for work in the morning first, she has the chore of rounding up the dogs and corralling them into their daytime designated dog play room. Sometimes they can be a little reluctant to get up from their morning naps to relocate. This particular morning, Jackie’s back legs seemed to be acting up, as they have in the past and he couldn’t quite get to a standing position. So he just lay down again to resume his nap. Perhaps he thought he might get an exemption from having to move to the play room.

As Cristy often reminds me, the dogs are clever, but we are the ones with the thumbs. So she executed a little ploy. She stepped around the corner and rapped sharply on one of the closet doors. In a flash, Jackie leapt to his feet, thinking it had been a knock at the front door. Of course the other dogs heard it too, and soon a chorus of barks sounded throughout the house.

The point however, is that as much as I hate to admit it, my sweet dog Jackie, might (just might) be a cunning manipulator, leveraging his aches and pains to try to get what he wants.

But, as they say, he had me at hello. So, I don’t mind playing along.

RTT - the early edition

Robins arrived in Houston today. I look forward to them each year and they arrive reliably on schedule, about 4 weeks before the official start of spring. They will be here for a couple of weeks before heading a bit further north to chase the edge of the ground temperature change. Of course, I’m just making this up because I am not an ornithologist. But it could be correct.

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I stumbled onto a new blog yesterday and the author listed ten things that she learned last weekend. If you think about it, we learn things all the time. So I stopped for a moment or two to consider what I learned last weekend. I did not undertake any particularly studious endeavors, so the things I learned were rather ordinary. But useful, nonetheless. At the top of the list is that fact that when you bake with whole wheat flour, the baked product tastes different. Previously, I had believed that you could bake with whole wheat flour but wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. I was wrong. The banana bread coffee cake I made with whole wheat flour is still good, but in a healthy-good sort of way. Not a yummy delicious treat sort of way.

Unfortunately, I purchased a standard size bag of whole wheat flour, so there is plenty remaining for future baking projects. And since I am frugal-girl, completely unlikely to discard a perfectly good bag of flour, there are plenty of whole-wheat baked items in my immediate future.

Finding a metaphor in the mundane

The correct tool for the job turned out to be steel wool. Worked like a charm. Scrubbing that burned-on residue from the bottom of the soup kettle was relatively quick work once I got the steel wool engaged.

Yesterday I made corn chowder and started by boiling pearled barley with some onion and celery. Barley gives the soup texture and makes it taste chowdery. But in my poorly managed multi-tasking frame of mind, I neglected to keep watch on the barley and consequently the water boiled out too quickly leaving the starchy grain to burn. And stick to the bottom of the kettle.

After discarding the contents, I tried an old remedy that has always proved successful for me in the past – boiling soapy water in the kettle. I think I read it years ago in a newspaper column. Probably Hints from Heloise.

But it didn’t work. Usually that technique makes the job of cleaning so much easier. No scrubbing even required. Not this time.

So this morning, as I was physically scrubbing the pan with my steel wool, I found my brain casting about searching for someone, something to accept the blame for the situation I was in. I landed on Heloise. Damn that tips column. Load of baloney!

Then the scrubbing was over and I almost had to laugh. So ridiculous that I would be trying to escape responsibility for something so insignificant, a minor inconvenience. But I was. Yeah, I’m human. Give my idiot card a punch.

Coincidentally, this is precisely the topic that one of my favorite bloggers recently presented in a very humorous way. Karal, at the orange chair. Check it out.

Tricks of the trade

A busy week of juggling flaming knives, and assembling a mountain of data into a visually appealing format, palatable for the average consumer.

This part of my job makes me think of myself as a sleight-of-hand artist. Figuring out how to disguise information into a candy-coated morsel so that meeting participants will gobble it up rather than glazing over and looking at it in utter disgust.

That’s how it usually is with purveyors of numbers. Dry reports. An endless list of numerals that only someone like myself could find remotely appealing.

Maybe, in some respects, this part of my job is sort of like being a parent and getting kids to eat vegetables in a loving and creative way. Mixing them in with something they already like, maybe macaroni and cheese or pizza.

It works with my dogs.

Oh, but wait, my dogs will eat anything. So no, not really.

RTT

Winter Olympics are both dazzling and puzzling. Those downhill skiers are some athletes. They go faster and I could ever imagine and they make it look easy. The resort villages hosting the events look absolutely enchanting. But I need to understand more about this sport known as curling. I’m sure one of the commentators will provide the background information I am seeking to explain why it is an Olympic event. For now, it simply puzzles me.

And then there’s Bob Costas’ shirt. Seriously, I think I’m tripping. Tiny little stripes two nights in a row. Doesn’t translate well on television. Looks like an optical illusion.

The final rounds of the Westminster Kennel Club dog show was broadcast last night, first night of a two-night event. I love WKC, primarily because of the good basic facts they provide when introducing each breed of dog. The origin of the breed, the dog’s level of energy and temperament as a member of a human family.

But one of the play-by-play broadcasters continues to refer to the competition as a “sport.” Now this is puzzling to me too. The Olympics definitely fall into the sports category. But the dog show? Not so much. The closest thing I can come up with would be a pageant. And I mean that in a good way, sort of like a scholarship competition.

I’ll be tuning in again tonight to see Best in Show and check out Bob Costas’ wardrobe selection.

Bonds of love

I don’t remember the last time I spent an evening out on the two teen-aged boys. Probably because I’ve never done it before. Cristy’s nephews, and really, mine too. One 18 and one 17. We drove downtown, laughed, acted silly, took dozens of photographs, mingled with the other patrons, and surprisingly, as the evening was winding down, had a rather serious adult conversation. I didn’t see it coming.

I don’t know if it matters so much, the precise words spoken. The fact that they were spoken is merely a reminder that at this juncture of their lives, on the cusp of branching out into another direction, that their loving family is there to cheer them onward. And we will be there too, if the choices in the adult world seem overwhelming and they want to talk through their options. Or even just find a place of refuge for an hour or two.

I don’t know what will unfold for either of them in the next year and I am not clear whether they, themselves, have envisioned their own futures.

We will be here to witness their accomplishments and trials and to remind them that we love them through each step of their journey.

RTT - the early edition

I didn’t watch football last weekend. Sounds pretty un-American. I just don’t much like football and I’m finding that the older I get, the less I enjoy watching television in general. So the chances that you’ll catch me watching something on television that I don’t particularly like anyway are pretty darn remote. But still, my hat’s off to all professional football players, I admire their fortitude, athletic skill and sheer strength. And congratulations NO Saints – great game, great season!

*********

I went out for dinner with some friends last Saturday night, had two absolutely delicious French pear martinis during dinner. They knocked me on my very own butt. Didn’t even feel it coming. Not the outcome I would have selected for that evening, needless to say. Ix-nay on the artinis-may for moi, at least for the foreseeable future.

*********

I was driving home one evening last week behind a regional freight truck with the corporate slogan painted in a very stylish script along the rear panel of the truck. It said: Service Unexcelled. I kept looking at it trying to figure out what that actually meant. I even looked up the word ‘unexcelled’ in an online dictionary. Of course, the language is absolutely correct, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t just the tiniest bit awkward. Perhaps I need to chalk up the string of double negatives in the preceding sentence on that awkward list too, come to think of it.

Happy Tuesday.

-Diane

High school musical

It was a relatively quiet weekend. It began last Friday; the opening night of Cristy’s nephew’s high school performance of The Music Man.

In an unspoken sense, attendance is mandatory at most functions where an audience assembles in the school auditorium, unless we have a very good excuse. So this was not the first trip to the high school to witness the collective dramatic and musical talent of the student body.

During one of the previous performances, we were squirming in our seats, longing for the concluding selection. I remember hearing a baby start to whimper somewhere in the audience. Then the sound of that whimpering retreating as the parent carried his or her child out of the theater. It seemed like a golden opportunity, the answer to our quandry. I remember whispering to Cristy: if you just start crying, I could escort you out… She lowered her head in muffled laughter.

I think that audiences attend student performances in order to see their own children. We see them on stage and notice, from afar, their grown-up appearance, their poise and the results of many, many hours of rehearsal. We hear their strong singing voices and marvel at their dancing ability. But still, it is tedious. We are transported back to our own experiences with school musical productions. I wonder what it was like for my parents and all of the other audience members to suffer through those performances with smiles on their faces.

The final scene arrived, there was applause and cheering, then the students appeared and there were hugs and congratulations. Then it was over and the students were off to Denny’s to celebrate over pie and coffee. And we went home, reminding ourselves this will be our last year for attending school performances.