Overzealous Ushers

This morning, I attended a performance of a stage version of Charlotte's Web with the kid, as an outing organized by her preschool group. The performance was at Shea's Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Buffalo, which is in turn the city's main locale for big productions and such. Since there were a lot of different school groups attending this play, the theater seating was sectioned off by school group, so the ushers could -- theoretically -- direct incomers to their appropriate seating area. Fair enough.

Except, they also wanted to pack in as many seats as possible, so since we were actually the first people from the kid's group to enter the theater, our usher -- a cranky little old lady with a button the size of a dinner plate reading "I'M A VOLUNTEER!" -- tried getting us to take a couple of empty seats in the middle of the school group in front of ours! This woman actually expected a four-year-old kid to understand her anal reasoning for not allowing her to sit with her friends, who started filing in moments later.

Luckily for her (the kid), I dug deep into my soul and found that part of me that refuses to respect authority. (Actually, it didn't require digging all that deep.) As I directed the kid to the seat beside one of her best friends, I could hear THE VOLUNTEER! behind me, grousing something along the lines of, "Well, that's not the way we do it."

The performance itself was pretty faithful, although I'm not entirely sure my daughter realized the sadness of Charlotte's Web's ending. She seemed to have a good time, though.

(BTW, a note to theater groups: Please make sure your sound equipment is properly tested before you give your performance, OK? Especially if one of your speakers is prone to emitting sudden and deafening bursts of static with no warning. This is generally not welcomed by a theater full of kids ranging from preschool to second grade.)