Sweet Tea, Big City

This weekend, I’m going to the theatre.

It’s not that I don’t get out much, but the highlight of my life lately has been prying dog food out from under the stove.

Don’t ask.

The theatre in our little town might not be the same as it is in the Big City (and by the way, you pronounce it thea-TUH so that everybody will know you're not going to the dollar movies even though they have a really sweet combo deal on buttered popcorn and a Coke).  Also, the Big City may not be the same to me as it is to you.

The Big City is a place where you can get food that doesn’t come in a crinkly paper wrapper and where you don’t have to pour your own drink, but you have to tell the waitress what you want because she doesn’t already know you always get sweet tea. 

Getting to the Big City involves checking the fluids in the Ford.  We keep a bottle of water inside in case we get stranded or thirsty on the trip.

The Big City is twenty minutes away.

In a Small Town most entertainment comes when the students in Ms. Marian’s dance class put on a recital and wear bows bigger than bulldozers in their hair and tap shoes that sound like someone playing Yahtzee in a blender, or somebody gets stopped on Main Street for pretending to rob the Zippy Mart.  Sometimes at the end of the school year, the fourth grade does a play.

So we’re going to the Big City to drink sweet tea and see a play that doesn’t feature any children we know, which might make it hard to keep up with the action.

It’s not Our Town, a play which is about a small town like mine and is my favorite play, although some people that I used to be married to say it’s dumb.  They also wouldn’t eat ground turkey just because it smelled like Thanksgiving when I made spaghetti.

There’s something to be thankful for every day.  I’m thankful that now he has to make his own spaghetti.

This play is about pirates back in the days when pirates were orphans and policemen said “Tarantara!”  It was written long ago by two men who didn’t like each other. One wrote the words and the other one wrote the music. But they didn’t speak to each other if they could help it.  They didn’t even sing or hum unless maybe it was to annoy the other one.

They probably had to make their own spaghetti, too.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Tarantara!