Friday Afternoon

There’s a group of young people at work. They all started this year, and they’re the best of friends. Most of them are single; only one has a kid. They sit together at meetings, they go out for beers, and they seem to be having a very good time. Yesterday a bunch of them were throwing a football on the grass outside work when I drove by (in my station wagon) with the girls. I told them they should either be inside working or somewhere else drinking. They threatened to throw the football into my car. I’d guess they ended up somewhere else drinking.

Meanwhile, M and I took E to her first theater class, which she’d been eagerly awaiting for weeks. I’m not sure what I was expecting--not what happened, only I’m not sure I can describe what happened in all its surrealism. The teacher (“You can call me Candace, or you can call me Miss Candace”) was a woman somewhere between 60 and 70, dressed in a black tunic, black knickerbockers, and black-and-white horizontal-striped tights. She had a hedgehog in an aquarium, and a big bag of feathers, plastic eggs, boas, fabric, pipe cleaners, baby ducks and baby birds, and red dots that were pretend strawberries in the show (that’s from E who is jogging my memory).

I think the plan was to read a story about a hedgehog, visit with the hedgehog a bit, and then act out the story. Which is kind of what happened. In a stream-of-consciousness, hodge-podge kind of way. Candace read a bit, then handed out some costume bits, then performed a bit, then spread out some fabric and hula hoops on the floor for scenery, then got the kids to perform a bit, then took out the hedgehog, then acted out the story with the kids, then showed the kids a few more pages in the book, all the while maintaining a random monologue addressed to the kids, the parents, M who was helping her, even herself. The kids were a bit baffled, but eventually got into it. I felt like I needed a giant margarita to truly appreciate it all.

Then a bunch of other kids started showing up for the next class--including a girl M hadn’t seen since preschool, M’s friend J’s little brother, E’s friend R’s big sister. Candace asked if M was taking the next class, M looked at me beseechingly, and I thought what the hell: if you’re going to have one kid taking a Friday afternoon theater class with a lunatic, you might as well have two. So I took E and R off to the playground, where they hung out on the jungle gym with three developmentally disabled guys and their caretakers. Meanwhile, a pregnant teen mom smoked cigarettes and let her toddler climb to the top of the jungle gym from where I rescued her (I tell you, it only got weirder and weirder).

M’s class is putting on a performance of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the Red State Capital City Arts Festival, so today we need to get a copy of the book which somehow she has never read. E has been chanting “I want some yummy yummy yummy for my tummy tummy tummy,” which was the refrain of the story her class performed. It’s all very theatrical around here.