Sudden Concert
Saturday, May. 17, 2003, 8:45 p.m.

Question: What concert?

What I Learned: Good things are worth getting wet for.

It is interesting how many surprises are held in day-to-day life. For instance, last Thursday was the Spring Chorus Concert at my son�s middle school. Now, my son is in the chorus and I noticed he was doing a bit of after-school practicing but he assured me it was for an upcoming competition. In fact, at the time I was suspicious enough to ask him if there was something coming up that I need to put on my calendar. No, he assured me.

Thursday, when my son came home from school, he asked me to iron his black pants because he had to sing that night at the Spring Chorus Concert. You know, like the kind of concert all good moms have to attend. Luckily, I had nothing on my calendar except the delightful plan of sitting my feeling-like-I-am-coming-down-with-a-sinus-infection butt down on the nice soft sofa in front of the TV and just relaxing and alright maybe getting in a little extra office work in just for good measure � the wonders of technology mean work is always an option or perhaps a requirement for me even while at home. It was not to be.

By concert time, the rain was coming down the way that water runs out of a shower head when turned on full blast with the hot water off. I was going though. More than that so was my daughter. She did the good deed � the sisterly thing - because you know heading out to a surprise middle school concert must have not have been too high on her teen list of things to do on Thursday night. She did it though. The funny thing is that we had fun. It was much more entertaining than expected - with a particularly splendid rendition of a Wizard of Oz melody and a Whole New World duet that ended in what I am told was a surprise kiss on the cheek � just too darn cute.

The thing about Middle School Chorus Concerts is that you can always expect most/all of the following:

• It will cost to get in,
• The program is extensive
• Your kid�s name may not be spelled right,
• Once the lights go down you�ll never be able to read the program anyway,
• The teachers let kids pick solos that are sometimes well above their budding vocal abilities,
• You will have to suffer with these kids as they struggle through their 2-3 minutes of singing trauma and you will really clap for them because they were brave enough to get up there and do that,
• You can sometimes catch a glimpse of a rising star,
• For some reason a kid does a dance number in the middle (but maybe that�s an anomaly),
• Sometimes you like the dance and when you do you are surprised because it bothers you that a kid is dancing during the chorus concert,
• Your kid will be the one talking to his/her neighbor or perhaps even worse, yawning, when the spotlight pans over the chorus,
• When the whole thing breaks up, your kid is one of the last ones to straggle out of the chorus room to which the whole merry band has retired post-concert,
• You feel uplifted and glad to be alive when you walk out of there.

Afterwards we walked though the downpour to our car which was parked in the very last row of the school parking lot � satisfied by our musical interlude, even if a bit the worse for the weather.

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