So yeah. For about a month now we’ve had a newspaper clipping sitting on our fridge. We live in the vicinity of Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Pops. Tonight is Berkshire night, meaning you can get FREE TICKETS if you live within an hour of the place. And we do. So SWEET. My Mom and Dad took the Bubs up last night to get some tickets. The whole shabang started a bit late for us…about 8pm…but what LUCK! They had planned a few things for kids, the most exciting of which was an “instrument petting zoo” which started at 6. Of course, owing to Camper’s huge talent conducting the ipod with his toothbrush, I was all LET’S GO!
So we went. We grabbed a couple of friends who live nearby and set out. After we parked our car with tremendous help from the various groups of teenagers hired for the event (WHAT? WHERE ARE YOU POINTING? USE A FINGER!) we walked our butts up to the front gate and handed them our tickets. I think we asked EVERYONE we met where the visitor’s center was, “Because that’s where the petting zoo is!” They waved us on, we got there, and walked in. “I hear there’ s an intrument petting zoo around here somewhere!” The tour guides looked at me like I had ten heads.
“Uh, actually, there’s not. That was a misprint in the paper.”
“So there aren’t any instruments around here for these kids to look at?”
“No, we asked them to fix it, but they didn’t.”
“So there aren’t any instruments around here for these kids to look at?”
No. none. But there is a tour! A tour which included a VERY sweet man walking us across the lawn, pointing at this:
And telling us about that house is an original restored something or other. He told us a bit about this and that, but honestly…as hard as he tried to make it interesting for the kids…I don’t think either of the children present noticed a thing he said. We heard there was a pre-concert going down a little further in to the “musical compound” of sorts, and in an effort to get my kid to see SOME KIND OF MUSIC we walked down there. Our trusty tour guide accompanied us, still desperate to do right by us, and pointed things out as we walked. We got here:
and decided to sit on the lawn and listen for a bit. Our tour guide, who was a bit on the elderish side did NOT sit on the super uber wet grass with us, because of the whole risk ratio of PNEUMONIA and DAMPNESS, etc. As we got settled I thought I heard the voice of Satan:
Siiiittttt dooowwnnnnn!!!!!
All low and angry like. I was like, “Whoa, whoever is yelling at their kid is MEAN. Whoa.”
Then I heard it again.
Siiiiiiittttt doooowwnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!
I turned and saw this woman:
(we were in front of her at the time)
YELLING at our friendly tour guide! I handed my mother my baby, and turned to her. I said,
“Beeeeeeee pooolllitttttteeeeee,”
and was going to go shove her face in her salad when our friendly tour guide stopped me. So instead I gave her a dirty look and said to the gang, “I’m going to put her on the Internet!”
So there, mean, witchy woman who probably got in on a free ticket just like we did and couldn’t wait 15 SECONDS for us to get settled so our tour guide to go back to whence he came. You know who you are, and shame on you. You might think you fit in with all those polo shirt wearing, champagne sipping, picnic basket grass-sitters. But you don’t. You drove back to your house and had some diet coke and mac ‘n cheese just like the rest of us, except you are MEANER.
I mean, there are a hundred funny/hilarious things that happened tonight…like my mom sitting our friends on our gate check bag for the stroller, and the wet grass seeping through, and all of our butts/knees ending up looking like this:
and like when Bubbs didn’t want to sit in the stroller and so our wee friend (who is just about 8 years old) took a turn and made Bubbs laugh. (Way to go stroller, way to handle a grown-up kid!) But honestly, it all pales in comparison to my desire to complain about the aforementioned woman. Seriously, I should have just kept with my plan to shield my child from the arts for as long as possible. The arts and polo shirts. Best laid plans.
