Weekend Dining - The Play

I had to go to a play last weekend to watch the SIL (sister in law) take to the stage as the lead in a melodrama at her church. I dragged OF (Old Friend of undesirable snackage fame) with me...misery loves company...

The church is in a neighboring town where the SIL and MIL (mother in law) both live. It’s a retirement community for the most part and there are affectionate terms for the local citizenry...LOL(s), LOM, FOP, and last but not least...Blueheads. (For the uninformed, LOL=Little Old Lady, not Laugh Out Loud, LOM=Little Old Man, FOP= Fucking Old People...just in case you were wondering....Bluehead should be self explanatory...Unfortunately for me, I fall into the last category but thanks to Crazy D the hair guy, my locks appear to be a healthy shade of brownish red...that is until the roots start to grow out...at which point I begin to look like Skunk Woman.)

When we walked in, we sat at a table near the back of the church but then we saw the SIL's husband, Gadget Man, who said there were seats saved for us right in front of the stage...so we moved.  While we waited, Gadget Man recounted the story of how he was driving around a few days earlier when he saw a white dog in the middle of a busy intersection.  The dog was acting really strange so he turned around and went back to see if he could get it out of the road.  When he got back, the dog had just laid down in the middle of the road.  So Gadget Man gets out of his Jeep,  and goes up to the dog, afraid he's going to get bitten, only to have the dog jump into his arms.  He puts the dog in his car & takes it to his vet to see if the dog has a micro chip, which it doesn't, but the vet tells Gadget Man that the dog is completely blind and partially deaf...no wonder he was acting disoriented.  Gadget Man takes the dog home and now he and the SIL have a blind and deaf dog added to their pack of three Basset Hounds.  This simple act of kindness has elevated Gadget Man to the top of my list of favorite people.  I love a happy ending.

Pretty soon, the lights dimmed and the play started....with a forgotten line...everybody laughed.

It was good because nobody took the whole thing too seriously, and the cast wasn't afraid to laugh with the audience at little mistakes like forgotten lines...in fact most of them carried some kind of prop, like a book, to hide the script so they could look at it from time to time.  I would like to point out here that most of the cast members were in their early 60's...(there were a few exceptions)...so the SIL who is in her 60's... was playing a winsome lass in her twenties. The town floozie played by G (who has sort of a Betty White air about her) was also in her 60's...it was actually kinda comical to watch someone in their 60's act like they’re in their twenties, flirting, and acting all coquettish...it would be more along the pathetic lines if it were happening in real life, but in a play, at least this particular one...it was fun.

For some reason I always feel kinda embarrassed to see an old lady flirting with some young guy... it doesn’t seem nearly as bad for an old guy to flirt with a younger woman...it seems kinda humorous...why is that? Why should it be any different? Everybody says men age better than women, but do they really? They get just as many wrinkles, get just as gray, and have just as much...if not more...girthage in their mid section. And the old men usually have gray hair sprouting from their ears...I’ve never seen an old woman with hair growing out of her ears...have you? Okay...we do get the weird inch long whiskers at random spots on our face and necks...which are only visible when we’re out in public where we can be mortified by the fact that we didn’t see them before we left the house where we had tweezers handy...been there.

Enough about that..

The showing of the play we attended was a “dinner” show. Keep in mind that this is, for the most part, an old folks church. Yes, OF and I dined on Shepherds’s Pie, Broccoli salad, and an applesauce cup. The Shepherd’s Pie was basically a hamburger soup with corn & peas, topped with mashed potatoes. By the time it got to the plate, there was a teensie tiny bit of mashed potatoes swirled into the slop...I mean soup (it actually looked like dog food...really, it did). If we'd stayed in our original seats, we would have been served first and may have gotten more mashed potatoes...but, such is life.  There were maybe two tablespoons of slop...I mean soup...on each plate. I’m not a big fan of hamburger unless, of course, it’s shaped into a nice, juicy, perfectly cooked patty, topped with perfectly melted cheese, and placed lovingly on a toasted bun...so I tried to sustain myself on the minuscule swirls of mashed potato that I could pick out of the slop...I mean soup. The broccoli salad was great...hard to believe I liked broccoli salad...but I did. Could be because I was starving and there were no more rolls in the basket on our table...or maybe my taste buds are changing as I age and I’m becoming more accustomed to old people’s food...but if that was the case, I would have liked the slop...I mean soup, wouldn’t I? I’m not really sure what the purpose of the applesauce cup was. Is applesauce something people really eat when they go out to a dinner?  Does anyone really "like" applesauce?  Or is it just something that's not really hated by anyone?   I suppose if you're old, really love apples, and your teeth are gone you might want to eat applesauce, but other than that, why wouldn't you just eat an apple?  I think they were just looking for something to make the plate not look so empty. Two tablespoons of slop...I mean soup, and a tablespoon of broccoli salad doesn’t really fill up a plate. I think the applesauce was an afterthought...I could be wrong. OF was even less thrilled with the feast than I was...we argued about who ate more. (Later she told me she thinks she got sick from it, but since she eats rotten food all the time I don’t see how this is possible...just sayin’...it's kinda hard to believe that the Queen of Decaying Delicacies was made ill by a little hamburger slop...I mean soup.) I was overjoyed when they said there was apple cobbler for dessert. I thought the applesauce cup was the desert so imagine how happy I was when I heard we were going to get apple cobbler & ice cream. The ice cream was good even though it was vanilla and there was only half a tablespoon...and would have been better with a swirl of Hershey’s syrup on top...but the cobbler had mushy apples (OF thought they were from canned apple pie filling...I think she’s right.). All in all, it was more famine than feast for me & OF. 

After the play we said our goodbyes to the SIL

On the drive home I kept telling OF that something seemed a little off when I turned the car to the left. I was hearing and kind of feeling...something...a noise, but I couldn’t really tell what it was. Every time we went around a curve to the left, I’d say “there did you hear it”? OF would say “I didn’t hear anything.” This went on a few times and finally, we came to a long straight stretch of road with no traffic and in what proved to be a misguided effort to make her hear the same noise, I abruptly turned the car to the left...into the oncoming lane... “There, did you hear it?” I said... OF made some kind of a noise...but I couldn’t really tell if she was responding to my question or trying to muffle the scream welling up inside her...it was kinda like “aaaaaahhhhhh”...that’s the best I can describe it. Not only did she not hear the noise, she apparently feared for her life in those brief seconds veering into the opposite lane. I was so intent on having her hear the “noise” that it really didn’t occur to me that what I was doing might actually scare her. Guess I should’ve warned her what I was going to do...hindsight’s always 20/20, isn’t it??? Well, anyway, we ended up in laughing so hard about my futile attempt to have her hear the “noise”, that my eyes were watering and I was actually afraid I might really run off the road...fortunately that didn't happen.  We made it home safe & sound ...God really does watch over children & fools... and I admittidly fall into the latter category...just for clarification. It's the stoopidist thing...