Immediately, Plan B was initiated. Unfortunately, nobody could remember where we put Plan B. Was it filed in the Christmas emergencies Google Doc, or was it folded in one of Pam’s sixteen planners? Luckily we have not forgotten the fine art of improvisation. Patrick and Sarah have spent most of their day in their room with the door shut, while the rest of us have broken out our collection of masks from moth balls. We are all hoping for the best. Tomorrow both sets of kids are scheduled to drive home. If you are so inclined prayers would be appreciated for Patrick and Sarah specifically…since I can’t imagine how bad it would be to make a 9 hour drive in holiday traffic while feeling like crap.
However, into every catastrophe, humor finds its way. When you least expect and are the least prepared for it, something hilarious tends to happen. I will try to explain while at the same time protecting the names and reputations of everyone involved.
Pam and I always buy tickets to a show when the kids come home for Christmas, and this year was no exception. Six tickets were purchased weeks ago for an afternoon show at a theatre that will remain nameless and for a show which will also remain nameless. Nothing in our previous experience at this particular venue could possibly have prepared us for what we witnessed. The title of the show suggested nothing but the best possible combination of music and merriment. We settled into our seats—just the four of us and N95 masks securely in place—and watched as four singers rushed out onto the delightfully warm and Christmas-y set.
My daughter listened to a TED Talk recently about public speaking which suggested that when a person walks out on a stage, we decide what we think of them in less than a minute based on two things—warmth and competence. The performer who was closest to me on the stage gave off two powerful vibes. I immediately thought, “This dude is gay and high.” Incidentally, neither of these traits are a negative in musical theatre. I was still pumped for the show. Then, he opened his mouth to sing. I must say that I have never been quite so glad to have been wearing a mask. His voice kept flipping back and forth between overacting show choir to incompetent opera. His relationship with the notes he was trying to sing were strained to the breaking point. As I listened to him I kept thinking, “man, there’s not enough weed in the world…” For a moment I thought it was a gag, that it was a plot device like when Barney Fife tried to join Mayberry’s choir. We would soon be treated the comic relief of having the one male singer kicked out of the troop leaving only the Lennon Sisters on stage. But no. He was for real…and to drive home the point he was given the first solo that hardy standard, Mel Torme’s Christmas Song. Our guy did his finest Frank Sinatra impersonation, placing his hand against the microphone stand and began, “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,”. So far, so good, I thought. He’s actually only a half a step under his note. Then the second line came out something like this—“Jack Frost shi, shippppping in the flows.” Luckily, he recovered his knowledge of the lyrics in time for us to hear about folks dressed up like Eskimos. At the intermission Pam leaned over and asked me, “Do you think maybe the real guy came down with Covid and they like literally got this guy off the streets 15 minutes ago?” What we didn’t know at this early point in the evening was that it would get much worse. Luckily of the other singers, one had a decent voice but was clearly under the weather, another had a passable voice but sang so softly she was hard to hear, and the third girl was wonderful and saved the entire show from a tomato barrage. The high point of the evening was when our unfortunate male singer was one line in to a third crooning solo when he tried to suavely remove his mic from its stand but it was stuck, whereupon he pulled harder and stabbed the mouth of the thing into his nose…FLummmpp! If he had played this for laughs it would have brought the house down. Since it was during O Holy Night…not so much.
During the show we were treated with several fun songs done reasonably well. But, we and the several five year olds in attendance got to hear Santa get outed in one weird song, along with a super fun round featuring a Christmas song, a Hanukkah song and a Kwanza tune where nobody could understand a word being sung.
You might think we regretted going. No way. They gave us all a cookie on the way out.
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