I bought tickets to The Lion King as a Christmas present for Elise this past year. She’s really wanted to see this production for years and made sure to let me know as much in November. So I made sure to sell my left kidney so she and I could see this magnificent Broadway show while it was being performed in Austin.
Many of my friends have seen The Lion King and I was told that I would love it. I knew Elise would love it as she likes things like plays, flowers, talking about her feelings, breakfast foods and Grey’s Anatomy.
The night started out with something in the world of married folks we like to call “not communicating effectively”. Allow me to verbally paint the picture for you:
The male role: [While scratching his groinal region] “We need to leave at 7:00 p.m. to get there on time.”
The female role: 7:35 p.m. and we’re rushing out of the house late because: makeup had to be applied, the baby had to be nursed, earrings had to triple-checked, husband had to be ostracized because he’s wearing jeans, wife’s blouse had to be ironed, all the while said husband is also being yelled at for not mentioning the fact that the tickets clearly indicate that there will be no late seating. In black and white, plain English the ticket reads, “Those who arrive late will be denied entry and be forced to sit on the steps of the Bass Concert Hall where the husband will be subjected to discussing what happened on last week’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Or his wife’s feelings on breakfast foods. Whichever is deemed by the wife to be more painstaking.
We were late for the show. I won’t name names here but someone had to to triple-check her earrings and hence didn’t eat dinner which meant the husband had to stop at Jack in the Box for a Jumbo Jack (excellent breakfast food, by the way) and we arrived somewhere remotely near the University of Texas campus at 8 p.m., which was when the show started. It was about at this point at which the tears started falling. I really didn’t want to spend two hours and forty minutes having “hakuna matata” beat into my skull. But the real tears were from my wife, who really wanted to see this show. We didn’t have $8 cash to pay to park in the parking garage (see wife needs Jumbo Jack meal above) so I pleaded with the gatekeeper to let me in and allow me to walk to the office to pay for a parking ticket with the credit card.
Elise had dressed up so beautifully for the evening and really wanted to see this performance and have a nice date with her loving husband. I was still in the dog house for “not communicating” that we had to be there on time. Just after we parked I gave her her ticket and told her to go to the show without me so she could secure our seats. I told her I would get into the theatre if it meant I had to discuss “my feelings” or last week’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy with the box office attendee.
The University of Texas is nestled on 40 acres. I think I walked the circumference of 41+ acres while trying to find the Bass Concert Hall. I stopped and talked to two foreign exchange students who, in hindsight, clealy indicated that the Bass Concert Hall was, “over there”, but for whatever reason, I thought “over there” was actually, “over in that other direction.”
I finally found the Bass Concert Hall and was greeted by Elise. We found out that they did in fact allowed late seating. We had to wait a couple minutes for Scene I to end so an usher could show us our seats. While your humble narrator was trekking the campus, Elise was able to watch the performance on a television monitor in the lobby.
I sat there for two and half hours and tried to look at my own eyebrows while humans pranced around the stage in costumes that would make for great Gwar concert while singing “hakuna matata”. But I also held my wife’s hand because it was something that she wanted to do and that was the most important thing for me.
Next time, we’re going to see World Combat League.
And we won’t be late.