Possumblog

THEATER!

It was a banquet for the kids in theater at the high school, not choir or band. And afterwards, AWARDS! ::sigh:: Didn’t get home until nearly 9:30. That’s way too long for something like this.

Maybe I’m just being a mean-spirited grouch, and I just don’t understand the intricacies of the theatrical mind, but you know, there’s an awful lot of pride going on there for an awful little amount of reason. The productions are fine, and the adults in charge do fine, and the kids learn stuff, but it’s the little details of things that just bug me. The banquet, if it can be called that, was a study in disorganization and inedibility, which is fine--if that’s the best you can do. But, I know these people, I see the cars they drive, and the houses they live in. And they certainly seem to have attitude aplenty. Thus, I expect more than a tough bit of “Salisbury steak” and mac and cheese, served with little-kid plasticware.

The recognitions afterwards? Well, if the best you can do is a fourth-generation photocopy of a cheesy handmade certificate, hurriedly filled in during the course of the banquet with a scrawl of pen, well, fine--if that’s the best you can do. But in a high school filled to overflow with computers and printers, and a year to get things together, and several days to know who the winners are, it seems as though a nicely done certificate printed off on the computer might be just as easily done as some scrap of paper dashed off between the slima beans and the trip to the restroom. The guy in our church who runs the VBS does certificates every year--it’s really not a big deal to give every kid a nice certificate that doesn’t look like a ransom note.

But again, if that’s the best you can do, that’s fine, but I really can’t understand the overweening snootiness of some of these folks, given the general level of half-assery that goes on. It reminds me of the story of the rooster who thought his crowing made the sun come up, and sometimes you sit there eating your cold mashed potatoes from a flimsy plastic spoon, and you just want to look at someone--anyone--and ask just who they think they’re trying to impress. If it’s worth giving the kids a banquet and awards, go on and do it the right way. Don’t give them stage prop awards that sorta kinda look like what a real certificate might look like. Don’t act like the clotted gravy and wilted salad you’re getting is just like what they serve at the Vanity Fair Oscar party--it’s worth springing for something a bit nicer, like maybe some barbecue from Jim and Nick’s.

Anyway, it’s not about me--I was just an observer, standing in the wrong place in the wrong group. Ashley had a good time, and that’s what matters. I just hope that one day she learns that there’s more to the ocean than just wading in the shallows.