Wicked

We took Big Girl to the Kennedy Center to see Wicked Saturday afternoon.  It was amazing!  Please see it if you ever have the chance.  Elphaba's character was played by the same actress who we saw in NY a couple years back.  She has not lost her ability to give you goosebumps.  The memory of her high notes are still fresh enough in my brain now that I can get chills just thinking about her singing.  She (Dee Roscioli) is that good.  I was so thrilled to be able to share this with my daughter.  We had been listening at home and talking about the story.  Seeing it the second time for me was just as great as the first.  I noticed more political undertones than before.  It's a really interesting story on many levels actually.

We made the horrific mistake of taking the Metro.  I had taken the subway when Little Boy and I scored free orchestra tickets last month and it couldn't have gone more smoothly.  That had been on a week day. On a Saturday afternoon we expected no problems.  However that was not the case.  As soon as we hit the first platform we were in a crowd who had been waiting for 30 minutes for a train to arrive.  We heard that there is a new budget cutting policy about running fewer trains on weekends. So that combined with a Nationals baseball game was a wicked combination!  We were packed in there like crowded sardines.  We also almost didn't make it on time to the show, which made the friend who we were meeting up with rather nervous since we had her tickets.  She smartly drove from Virgina and was there an hour early.

Things really got worse though on the ride home.  I thought our train was crowded before but the one on the way home was even more crowded.  And we had the misfortune to be squished in next to a most unpleasant passenger.  He was a rather large man who was seated.  When I got within a couple feet of his air space he told me I was "close enough!"  I shifted my body so as not to be giving him a view of my backside and asked him if that was any better.  He rudely told me "no!"  I guess he didn't like my hip either.  I didn't know why he was complaining, at least he had a seat.  I told him that was the best I could do.  My neighbor was a friendly type who made a comment about not everyone being as patient as they should be on the subway that day.  This probably had him fuming because a few stops later when my husband accidentally stepped on his outstretched foot he loudly expressed himself with a "You stepped on my F____ing foot!"  Troy politely replied "sorry buddy"  but I was not letting him off that easily.  I called him out on his foul mouth and pointed out that I had my 8 yr old with me.  He told me he didn't care and said it was my husband's fault for stepping on his foot.  I should have thought of the obvious here and said that one thing was not intentional while the other was but instead I said "well I am sorry that happened now was he going to say sorry for his mouth?"  Guess what?  He wasn't.  So I just said we were going to try and get as far away from him as possible, he said "GOOD!"  At this point some nice teenagers gave up their seats for us (right behind him).  There was lots of "sheesh" ing from me on the way to our newly scored seats at which point my husband mentioned that I simmer down.  Big Girl was a bit shaken.  She had dreams that night of the man coming to find us in our beds and harm us.  Perhaps that was because he issued a threat to me "keep it up lady and I will come back there and cause a scene!"  "Oh I am just shaking in my black sandals here!"  I replied not wanting to be bullied.  More 'simmer downs' from T.  I don't know why he got me so riled.  I just really really hate it when people are foul-mouthed in front of my kids.  There is just no reason for being that stupid in my opinion.

So for the next 10 stops or so behind this large foul man I wondered as did the munchkins,"are people naturally wicked or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?" I whispered in Big Girl's ear that I felt sorry for that man because surely he can't be very happy.  She may have gotten my message but instead she shushed me for fear that he would hear and become an insane angry man again.  That is when I began to regret ever saying anything at all to him.  Surely I didn't change his behavior and possibly only made it worse.  I guess it's as they say in the musical 'no good deed goes unpunished.'