A Little Of Both

Today I saw the past, present and the future and had a ball doing it.

Tonight was Hurricanes play schools Christmas/Holiday concert. The four year old class did “Twas the Night Before Christmas” and the three year old class did a song about dinosaurs Christmas. I thought it was weird too, but basically they stood in a circle and listened to a song on the player. It was a pretty good circle.

The concert was to start sharply at 6:00-ish which means it was about 6:15 when the last little reindeer came running in. I feel for the parents that had to race home, whip up something for supper and then race out again with a little tree, reindeer, sugar plum or mama in her cap in tow. Hurricane was Santa Claus and had one of the only speaking roles which made Poppa pretty proud of his little guy. His mom and dad asked us to pick him and Tornado up from the day home and feed them supper which made it a little easier to get him to the school on time.

My goodness, the whole evening brought back memories of other concerts throughout the years that my own kids performed in. They weren’t bad memories, but I wouldn’t say they were good memories either. I wouldn’t trade them for a ton of gold. Well, maybe for a ton, but you get the idea. Half of the time I couldn’t follow what the hell was going on in these shows, but I figured that if I video taped it I could go over the recording at my leisure and piece together the basic plot line. It was a good thought, but unfortunately, having sat through it once I was pretty reluctant to do so again any time soon. Just recently, well, a year or so ago I bought the technology to convert those old video tapes from the eighties to a digital format. It has been twenty years or so and having viewed a few minutes of those old concerts I realized that it is still too soon. Maybe in another ten years I can try again.

Hurricane was pretty calm considering that he was staring in his first leading role and I wouldn’t be surprised if he took this up for a living. Shyness doesn’t seem to be a problem for him. I guess no one told him that he is supposed to be nervous just before the performance. He had his red suit and bag of toys, the trademark hat and of course a beard. My daughter commented that he had a beard just like Poppa and he replied “No, my beard is as white as snow!” Yep, Poppa has a beard like the snow at the side of the road a few days after the last snowfall. I think I would rather have the white as snow beard. I wonder if there is a reverse Grecian formula. While the actors were waiting in the wings, Santa was having some small amount of trouble keeping his beard in place and his mom had to help put it right. One of the reindeers started to cry because his antlers were bothering him. A couple of the other reindeer and a tree wandered off to sit with mom and dad. It was like herding cats!

The play went off without too many problems. The “I in my cap” guy lost interest pretty early on and had to be reminded to pay attention. The “sugar plums” forgot that they needed to dance and the reindeer and Santa arrived on the rooftop from more or less the same direction. I took too many pictures and I am sure that there will be a tear in the corner of my eye when I look at them. I am not sure if the tears will be for Hurricane or from the memories of my own little ones when that much younger man watched his kids perform in their very first Christmas concert. A little of both I suppose…