A Night to Remember (ugh!)

Nancy and I decided to see the musical, 'Meet John Doe", at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D. C. to celebrate the mid-point of Nancy's Spring Break. The tickets were purchased on a beautiful spring day during Cherry Blossom Festival time. Unfortunately, as the day to see the musical approached, so did a frigid mass of cold air from Canada.

Undaunted by this news, and lacking even a modicum of common sense, I chose fashion over warmth in my attire for the evening. It was as if, by the power of will alone, I could force the weather to be nice because I so much wanted it to be. As usual, there was a price to pay for such stupidity. Another curious notion I hold is that I can look at a map and instantly commit it to memory. The fallacy of this notion was exposed when I parked the car and started walking toward the theater in a direction off by precisely 180 degrees.

Well, let's summarize the situation. We are cold. We are lost. We are racing the clock. One of us has Parkinson's Disease and shouldn't be outside freezing in the middle of the night. Nancy, correctly sensing that I would die before asking for directions, got them from a stranger and we resumed our quest. We arrived at exactly 8 O'Clock Unfortunately, the play had started at 7:30.

This news was delivered by a woman in the box office in a tone usually reserved for addressing those of extremely low intelligence. I wanted very much to smack her. Instead, I grabbed our tickets and entered the theater. We rushed up the circular staircase to the balcony area (Puff, puff!). Oh, look! The show had indeed started and looked like fun.

Unfortunately, it was very dark and there was no usher to show us to our seats. I studied the ticket stubs by the light of a small lamp at the back of the theater and decided to go for broke. I started very slowly down the pitch dark aisle toward the front of the balcony. This is exactly the kind of dangerous situation that we of the Parkinson persuasion are told to avoid like the plague. Miraculously, arms appeared from the darkness to lend support (who says there's no God?). We finally reached our seats, noting that they would have been great except for the post which stood between us and the stage. But by leaning away from each other, we were each able to see one half of the stage.

For some reason, I was finding it difficult to get in the mood. Not only was I exhausted, it was time for my medications. Using the Braille system, I managed to find the appropriate pills in my pill box and swallowed them. During the intermission, I realized I would be unable to make it through the entire play without a trip to the men's room. My heart sank as I remembered it was on the first floor. As I looked down that quaint little circular staircase, it appeared to be about the same height as the Grand Canyon. I looked at Nancy and said, desperately, "Please let me go home".

We found our car and started home. I began to have visions of climbing into my nice warm bed and sleeping forever (or until time for my next pill, whichever came first). Unfortunately, some local traffic official had decided it would be a great time to close the portion of roadway which I normally use to cross the Potomac river into Virginia. The detour provided was confusing to me and most of the other drivers trying to get to Virginia. We all ended up following each other in circles until we finally got back on track. When we finally got home, I thought to myself, "the guy who first said, "Home, Sweet Home" really knew what he was talking about. Indeed, I have vowed never to leave home again (except maybe to see the part of the play we missed).