It was cold outside. My mother made me wear a jacket. I haven’t been to the symphony since 1990. Hovering around age 46, you do the math.
While being a less than stellar student in high school, one of my teachers, Mrs. Cahallan, inspired me to write. She was my civics teacher, and a great one. At that time, a junior, with a miniature mind, I was too interested in baseball to care about legislation and the government. In fact, to me, branches were only made for swinging and ultimately falling to the earth. Gravity is underrated.
In order to gain some extra credit, just to bring my grade to a “C”, Mrs. Cahallan said if I went to the symphony, she’d offer us some bonus points.. So, my friend, Andy, and I did just that.
It wasn’t difficult to convince mom and dad to go out on a weekday. Hell, we were going to the symphony and after telling them the story as to why, they thought it was an excellent idea. So, after covering up properly, Andy picked me up and we headed to downtown Spokane, Washington to witness a cultural event. We did it by way of the local Zip Trip, where Andy, equipped with a fake identification card, purchased a twelve pack of beer. Since we had at least 30 minutes before showtime, we headed to Riverfront Park and proceeded to drink the beer. Fortunately, the park was within walking distance to The Metropolitan Theatre of un-welcomed 17 year old idiots.
We purchased our tickets as though we belonged to a club while ignoring the looks from tuxedos and fur animals staring with distain. Andy and I weren’t wearing hats and our hair was combed. That’s pretty much all we had going for us that evening.
After finding our way to our seats, we noticed we weren’t close to the aisle. This proved a problem to overactive bladders. We just shrugged, and said, how long can this concert last? One hour in, we began fidgeting, but knew we could make it to intermission within a half hour. Intermission wasn’t for another hour after finally reading the literary paper they had provided in the lobby which I quickly tossed in the garbage….I mean recycling bin. Andy kept his not for posterity, but to provide documentation of our existence at the Met to Mrs. C when arriving to school on Monday.
Scene Two, That’s when game time was over, Either we pissed our pants or left attempting obscurity. Perhaps both. Neither was quite successful or graceful. Excuse me, and pardon me didn’t leave the theatre of being excused or pardoned. We were shew shewed! We were, “get them out of here!” We were even, “Call the police on those little bastards.”
Peacefully, we left, and we passed the class. I even remember writing this to Mrs. Cahallan and trying to convince her it was only soda we were drinking. She didn’t buy one word, Yet, she loved the story. God Bless Her.