"You Just Had To Be There........"

This story goes under the heading, "You just had to be there......."

Darrell and I have had countless escapades over the years, not just as children; that was warming up. Some of the restaurant experiences alone have been legendery. Like a dinner at the Delta years ago where the waiter whipped the last precious bite of cheesecake out from underneath my nose so fast, I nearly got whiplash. Or a delightful lobster dinner at MacKinnon's, where our over-attentive waiter Tony (with what was, I'm sure, a fake Italian accent) had to be straightened out. He had the notion that Darrell and I were lovers on a hot date, it was ridiculous, suggesting we hold hands at our table, perhaps we'd share bites of our dinner, til Darrell finally lost it and said, non too politely, "You've got it all wrong, Tony, she's my sister." Tony cooled his jets after that.

But every year we usually make a date to have an excursion somewhere on the Island, and we look forward to it so much, we're a lot of fun when you get us together.

Sometime just before the pandemic we booked tickets at the Confederation Center to see a new play named, "Thank You For Being A Friend." And as you can imagine, it was about the hit series "The Golden Girls." Darrell loves that show, Blanche in particular, after all who doesn't like a saucy Southern Belle? Or as Dorothy would say, "a slut?"

Anyhooo, we got in line, and proceeded to our seats, which were good seats, settled in with our programs and enjoyed people watching til curtain time. I rarely leave home without a water bottle, and had recently treated myself to a pretty copper colored stainless steel flask. I pulled it out of my purse as the lights went down and placed it on the floor at my feet. There is absolutely no extra room in the seating, not for long legs, sharp elbows or water bottles, most of of which was not an issue with Darrell or me.

Every person in the theatre sang the intro to the play, we knew every word!

"Thank you for being a friend

Traveled down a road and back again

You're heart is true, you're a pal and a confidant........"

Well, we belted it out too, we even thought there was an actual plane going overhead, the soundtrack was so loud, and those of us who tuned in to that show each week would remember the big silver plane in the opening scene.

Since the advertising for the show told us that live actors would play the parts of the Golden Girls, we waited impatiently for their appearance. The voices sounded great as they started their lines, we could hardly wait for the play to begin.

Then an actor appeared onstage holding a life sized puppet of.........you guessed it.........Dorothy. It was a man, handling the puppet, and his voice was a dead ringer for Dorothy's.

Okaaaaaaay.............

Then the rest of the Golden Girls appeared, one at a time, portrayed as giant puppets, which the live actors manipulated and did the voice for.

Well, now.

It was awful.

Correction, it was gawd awful.

Not at all what we expected. Darrell was less and less excited, til near half time, he said, "Let's get out the hell out of here."

And I said, "Good God Darrell, we paid a fortune for the tickets, we should wait at least until the second half to see if it improves."

Well, by this time, he was in no humour, so we stretched our legs at the half time break, and filed back in to our seats. Again the lights went down and the theme song played, with a lot less enthusiam than at the beginning. That also could be attributed to the fact that over half the seats were now empty, paying customers had left in droves.

Darrell was done. He said, "I'm getting the hell out." And this time I agreed with him, so I reached down to grab my water bottle, but in the dark I knocked it over, and it started rolling down under the rows of seats.

In the dark. Surrounded by people we didn't know. And didn't want to know. But I could hear my flask somewhere in the rows ahead of us, as we crept and stepped over and around people in our row. Of course, it would have been too much to ask that our row might be empty, but oooohhhh no.

.

Darrell hissed at me........"Leave the effin' thing there." (You fill in the blank.)

And I hissed back, "I just paid over $30.00 for it, I'm not friggin' leaving it here."

So I got out of our row, and climbed into the next row, got down where I estimated it to be, fumbled around in the dark on my knees, and finally grabbed the little frigger. Then we did the walk of shame up the aisle, through the lobby, in silence, not making any eye contact. And really, isn't that the Island way? Don't complain, don't say anything bad, don't potentially hurt someone's feelings? How about the time worms were crawling out of our salads when Mavor's was the restaurant at the Center? I was running a real risk of vomiting on the floor, not a good look, and the waitress must have suspected something. She was horrified of course, and asked if she could bring us another salad. I looked up and just my look alone must have conveyed.......seriously? Another salad? Should we set up a race track for the worms? Are you kidding me? No, thanks.

We paid a lot of money for a puppet show for adults, plain and simple. We were not amused, and neither were over half the patrons, the seats were emptying faster than General Lee went through Richmond, but that's another story for another day.

Lesson learned.