What In Tarnation?!?!? In the Classroom

I managed to talk Pressed and Michael into going to the Muny again. Our track record has not been the best.

This week Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s over-hyped musical Cats is playing.

The Muny is the nation’s oldest and largest outdoor theater located in Forest Park in St. Louis. The Muny is an experience and a good place to see some great shows for not too much money (the cheapest seats are free, we chose the $8.00 seats). If you grow weary of the show you can watch the planes flying overhead coming and going from Lambert Airport. The Muny is a family tradition in St. Louis for many folks and therefore the shows they have are generally family friendly. The audience of a typical show at the Muny is the most diverse audience that I have ever seen at this kind of event which is cool.

Being an outdoor theater, weather is a concern. Before we left I was optimistic despite the tornado warning for St. Louis and surrounding counties because there was only a 30% chance of precipitation. I may be stupid but I’m not dumb, so I grabbed an umbrella, just in case.

We got to the Muny, found a parking place, bought our tickets, found our seats and sat down to wait for the show. It was difficult to not notice the huge dark looming clouds that were coming our direction. Still I was optimistic. At about 8:00 pm the first sprinkles started and everyone made their way to the open-sided shelter areas to wait out the rain. Normally that would have kept us dry, however, the wind started to pick up and when I say pick up I mean seemingly hurricane force winds here. Because of the wind, it now appeared that it was raining sideways which meant it was coming into our shelter. Unfortunately I had found myself to be on the front lines taking the brunt of the beating with only my tiny umbrella to shield me. So there we are huddled with people we don’t know, lightening and thunder everywhere, umbrellas being ripped apart. Every time there was thunder some girl would scream, it really felt as though I was in the middle of some disaster movie, the whole thing was kinda surreal.

Eventually the wind died down and the umbrellas also came down. Some people started filing back to their seats and I moved to the dry area. A man came over the loudspeaker and proudly announced that they had been in contact with the weather bureau and they said the rain would stop in about 30 minutes and then we could start the award winning show, CATS! The sky was clearing and it appeared that we were going to get to see the show after all. It was a few minutes after that, I noticed an unsettling trend. The flags were now blowing in the exact opposite direction than what they had in the torrent that we had just experienced. That could mean only one thing! The storm wasn’t done with us yet and even worse than that, since I had moved positions, I had once again positioned myself on the front lines taking the brunt of the rain. In accordance with the prophecy the rains, thunder, lightening, and screaming returned. At this point I was hoping the the Cats had drown (I’m debating on what the correct past tense verb is in this case, sorry). I gave Michael the umbrella and charged him with retrieving his car so we could leave.

After we got in the car we decided to just leave and go try to catch a late show over at the AMC on Olive. We got to the movie theater in time to watch Dodgeball (it had some funny moments but too much of it’s humor from gross-out and crude moments [D-]). During the quite sections of the movie we could still hear the deluge occurring outside. After the movie we got in Michael’s car to head home. It was still raining but not nearly as heavy as it had been earlier in the evening. We were going along a nearly deserted street (a little quicker than I would have preferred) and Pressed and I were discussing the movie when all of the sudden Michael slams on the breaks. It is at this moment that there is a difference of opinion of what happened. All I know for sure is that I turned around and my brain stopped functioning. Evidently, Michael was approaching a stop light, it changed from green to yellow and Michael says that we told him to stop (even that we were talking about the movie at the time) so being the fidgety person that he is, Michael stomped on the breaks and we skidded to a resting place just beyond the line and my pants were now wet for the second time of the evening, if you get my drift. As we hydroplaned home, Michael would have to relive that experience several more times and Pressed and I reenacted, a show beginning about every ten minutes. Michael’s already tarnished driving record (maybe Pressed will share some of those stories) was tarnished even more.

When I got home, I did a little happy dance, changed out of my still damp clothes and tried to go to bed only to be haunted by the sound of a car without anti-lock breaks squealing to a stop.

It has yet to be determined if we are going to go back in to Forest Park to claim our rain checks. One thing that is guaranteed is that Michael will not be driving.

Class dismissed!