When I heard that Wicked was coming to town this summer, I hit
the keyboard like a shot. I didn’t want anyone getting *my* seats, the ones where
my theater buddies and I enjoyed Rent, Jersey Boys, West Side Story, and
Hairspray. Lower Loge, in the little side section that hangs down over the
orchestra seats and you can choose the row that is exactly as long as your
party. As I constructed my email to the sistahs, I thought about how much my
girl would love to go. She’s my front seat singing partner after all, and we’re
all about the show tunes. It was so
expensive, though. Way too much for a ten year old. But…. the dates coincided
with her 11th birthday! And…three of my friends’ girls also had
birthdays during this show’s run. It was destiny. I floated the idea, and two
of the pairs were in town and interested, so we invested in six seats, two
little rows of three, in our beloved lower loge.
When I told my girl the news, she was over the moon! We
immediately set about procuring the soundtrack and listening from start to
finish. We discovered our favorite numbers, we discussed the plot as best we
could based on the lyrics and the sorta kinda familiar story. We listened to it
a lot. We listened together and separately, until we both knew every in and out
of every song. Recently our car singalongs have become bona fide duets, and it’s
been so wildly wonderful to work out harmonies and just belt it out with my girl,
adding jaunty yet restrained dance moves whenever possible (some of us are
driving). It makes me so happy to sing with my girl, it’s so familiar and fun,
and comes so naturally to her that I forget she doesn’t have all the sisters
built in to do skits and sing duets and always know every single line. She’s
got me, though. And we’re awesome! I have to begrudgingly let her be Elphaba
sometimes, at least until she works out finding her upper range. But she
understands that I can’t not sing the line “so if you care to find me, look to
the western sky!” I really just can not not sing that. She gets me.
This weekend presented us with the perfect opportunity for a
viewing, it was just a matter of figuring out how to make the VCR work with the
cable and find the remote and find batteries for the remote and figure out the
input of every freaking piece of connected machinery and then just like that we
were on the farm with Dorothy. It was an old tape, as evidenced by the fact
that it was a tape. We found the tracking and got it to a semi-clear image and
we dove in. I gave my girl the remote to fast forward the commercials, and she
did so diligently during every break while I did whatever one does during a
break from Oz. At one point she said “Wow, that tiger has been on cereal commercials
for a long time!” And it dawned on me
that this was an old old tape, recorded a looongity long time ago, probably
when we got that gigantic first VCR that dad was so proud of, with buttons
the size of piano keys and audibly grinding circular gears.
From that point on,
we put the remote aside and enjoyed the commercials; it was such a fantastical
blast from the past! Low tech and supremely dorky, lots of white folks hawking sugary
snacks and fast food, jingles and slogans, cbs newsbreaks by an anchorwoman sporting a silk scarf tied into a bow and a
righteous Dorothy Hammil hairdo, and teasers for the newest episodes of WKRP in
Cincinnati and the Dukes of Hazard. What a treasure trove! It’s amazing to note
that although the world has so drastically changed since the night Dad
simultaneously pressed two buttons to record this classic film for us, so much
has not. Tony’s still the Tiger, you can still have it your way at Burger King,
and Oh Auntie Em, there’s still no place like home!
“Wow, that tiger has been on cereal commercials for a long time!” I love that. I love her. I love you. I want to sing with you both. Come here.
ReplyDeleteThis is so purely awesome, Jacquie. I love the image of Dad simultaneously pressing two piano-key-sized-buttons on the gigantic VCR so you and your girl could watch The Wizard of Oz in 2012.
Sometimes the Universe is just perfect.
xxEllie
It is. Pure awesome. I loved every dang word, J.
ReplyDeleteAnd I am so looking forward to our big night out at the the-a-ta, in our "two little rows of three, in our beloved lower loge."
But, oh the catch up my girl and I must do! I need to find that CD TODAY, and start playing it non-stop.
And that VCR tape?? Treasure trove, indeed!
xoxo,
Beth
Jacq, love this blog. I have such fond memories of (quietly) singing with you & your girl last summer on the train from NYC to CT. (Thankfully, your boy was wearing earphones - otherwise you assured me he'd yell at us!) Enjoy Wicked! xo
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