Pater Familias … because I'm your FATHER!

Better With Beer

January 8, 2010 · Behavior | Glad Dad | Suburban Survival

Your kid(s) put on shows at home? Do you watch them? Enjoy? Avoid?

Reluctant Pop Surprised And Entertained By Orphan/Wild West/Swiss Drama

“Play” in playdate has taken on a new meaning.  

Get Girl Child together with a friend or two, they spin some flippy make-believe into a theatrical production, costumes and all.  

From the paternal/janitorial point-of-view, this is great, requiring much less cleanup than arts and crafts or, God forbid, mixing up secret potions in the kitchen.  

Also you’ve got a developmental upside – creativity, self-expression, nah, nah, nah.

All good, except the thing’s not over until grownups watch.

In a playdate situation, this means both hosting and pickup parents are obliged to sit through doings that make sense to nobody but the kids, faking rapt attention, then clapping and heaping on insincere praise.  

Wrong, wrong. Not, mind you, because the shows are bad. For first- and second-graders, the kids do great.

But it irks me to get so serious about children fooling around at home. The solemn, heavy, PBS sense of obligation, like permanent damage could be done by not watching and praising. A parental got-to that Pater declines to accept. 

The other day, though, I was all the audience GC and her good-good friend the Swiss Superior Triplet (SST) had. And I felt like watching.

Truth, I felt like sitting down and having a beer, which I could do while watching, so why not?

Don't catch the play’s name, but here’s a synopsis:

Two inseperable sisters live in an orphanage run by a harridan who works them unmercifully. They plot their escape, go to the Wild West by jet, live in a wooden hut and love their new life on the open range. They take a short trip to Switzerland and come home to the West.

The show’s end teases Part Two, where the girls meet the King and Queen of Texas!

A clip:  

Scene: Wild West, at night. Girls on ground by campfire near wooden hut.

SST: Sissie, it’s so beautiful. Here in Texas the stars are so bright.

GC: We just sit by the fire and sing and tell stories and stay up late…

SST: Tomorrow we’ll make s’mores!

The girls talk over a background of roots cowboy and country music – Tex Ritter, Patsy Montana, etc. They wear a couple of GC’s old party gowns from Costco, so they look like they’re going to an event at the Bush Whitehouse. They speak in affected, old-time stage English, like mini-Katharine Hepburns.

Oddly fascinating, but you probably have to be there. 

When I praise the performance, I mean it – more than I ever have, anyway.

And I’m dying to meet the King and Queen of Texas.

I’ll bring beer. 

How are you with at-home theatricals?

So how do you handle at-home kiddy theatricals?

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