Don’t Yell “Fire” in a Crowded Theater

Saturday night was our school’s last performance of The Wizard of Oz.  For me, the production fell into that Type-2 fun category.  I’m not the most organized person, and my role as leader of the tech crew really called for someone with some organizational skills.  I don’t possess them. It also calls for someone with tech savvy. I don’t really possess that either. As a result, I stress about the details I’ll likely miss and the time I’ve likely squandered.  I spend a significant amount of time each year relearning the ins and outs of the equipment that I never use for the other nine months of the year.   It’s fun.

But the real Type 2 moment came last week on Tuesday, when we staged the Understudy Show.  This year 160 kids signed up to participate in the musical.  Finding roles for all 160 kids proved challenging.  Many wanted to be on stage and in the spotlight, but a surprisingly large number of kids requested roles behind the scenes, either as stage or technical crews.  The Understudy Show, was the big moment for a lot of kids, both on stage and in the background.  We invited parents to attend, but warned them that it would be a very rough rehearsal, as it was still two days before our first performance. We also warned them that it might run late. 

We scheduled it for 5:00, so that more parents could make it, and we ran a regular rehearsal beforehand.  Around 5:00, the understudies were all in their costumes and getting mic’d.  The tech crew readied the sound system, which involved using microphones and headsets that we had just received the day before.  Another crew member fiddled with a new computer program to display projections that we had just purchased.  The spotlight operators flipped through their scripts figuring out who would cover which entrance or which solo.  The stage crew scrambled to move some of the recently completed set pieces that had just arrived on stage.  I would characterize the atmosphere as frenetic, maybe a bit chaotic.  Parent volunteers manned the costume rooms.  Others distributed props, while still others assisted with special effects hardware and kid wrangling.  The parents of the understudies filed in and took seats in the auditorium, no doubt wondering if a show could really begin in the near future.

That’s when the fire alarm went off.

Really.

Did I mention that it was pouring rain?  Oh, I forgot to mention that?  Well, yes, cats and dogs, as well as lions and tigers and bears fell from the sky.  Oh my.

Compared to the chaos that had preceded this moment, the next two minutes actually featured some order.  The cast and crew and parent volunteers and audience members all dutifully filed out of the building into the pouring rain.  I had on a headset, a rented headset, a high quality and expensive headset.  I must have looked very silly as I first whipped it off my head, fearing it would get wet and die, and then replaced it fearing that if I weren’t wearing it, and I somehow needed to communicate with another adult in, for example, an emergency situation, I might really regret leaving it in the burning building.  I took it off and put it back on twice, before deciding that this could actually be an emergency, and I’d better keep it with me.  

As we stood in front of the building, umbrellas popped up, and kids and adults huddled in small groups.  Makeup streaked down cheeks.  Hairdos wilted.  Shoes squished. Costumes drank up the rain..  I tried to quiet groups of kids.  Who was I kidding?  This was 160 kids and at least 70 adults.  Our producer had a list of the rehearsal attendees and immediately started counting children.  Other adults tried to keep the kids from changing positions.  I saw one man standing off to the side with a very large umbrella.  I asked him if he might head toward the flagpole, where a group of tech crew kids stood in t-shirts with no protection from the elements.  

“Actually, I’m looking for my son.  I don’t see him.”

“What’s his name?” I asked. 

“Jonathan.”  

“Oh, I know him.  I’ll help you look for him.”  I spent the next frantic minutes running up and down the sidewalk scanning the costumed, hooded, and umbrella’d crowd in search of Jonathan.  I couldn’t find him.

Around that time we heard the sirens as the fire engines rounded the bend in the road and sped toward our parking lot.  I finally found our producer and told her I couldn’t find Jonathan.  

“Oh, he’s on the other side of the building with Amy and some parents.”

I hadn’t realized that this huge crowd of people in the front of the building wasn’t even our whole group.  I ran to Jonathan’s dad and let him know about the group in the rear.  

As I continued to pace up and down the line, shielding my headset from the rain, while the rest of me had turned to a soggy mass of clothing, I took in the questions from every kid. 

“Are we still going to do the show?”

“Why are the fire engines here?”

“Did someone pull the alarm?”

“Is this a drill?”

I loved that one.  In their defense, I don’t think the kids who asked that last question really meant drill.  I don’t think they really believed that some sadistic adult thought that 5:00 in the pouring rain with 160 costumed, mic’d, made-up and hyped-up kids provided the perfect opportunity to practice fire safety procedures.  I think they really meant, “Is this a real fire?”

I tried to answer patiently, but I think I mentioned earlier that I was a bit stressed to begin with.  Now, imagining ruined costumes, ruined electronics, soggy humans, and an extended stay in the rain while firefighters inspected the building, it was hard to remain calm.  I decided that stepping off to the side might be a good strategy. 

As I stood at a distance, I surveyed the scene.  Our line of kids and adults stretched at least fifty yards along the road in front of our school. Most stood on the sidewalk in some semblance of a line.  Adults tried to keep kids sheltered.  Some kids laughed and joked.  A few others cried.  I wasn’t sure if it was out of fear for their safety, disappointment about a missed performance, or concern for their soggy costume.  

Sooner than I had feared, the firefighters emerged from the front door and gave the all-clear.  We all filed into the building and gathered in the auditorium to regroup.

When everyone had found a seat, our director said, “Well, I guess we’ll never forget this rehearsal.  Maybe someday we’ll all laugh about it, but today, we’re going to try to do our Understudy Performance.  This means a lot to those people who spent hours at rehearsals and hours learning lines.  Let’s try to make the best of this crazy day.”

Miraculously, the kids rallied, refocused, and ran the whole show.  Maybe it was sloppy at times, but they pulled it off.  Type 2 fun, to be sure. 

Postscript:  The firefighters said the alarm went off not because of a fire, but because of water leaking into an area that caused a sensor to falsely detect a drop in sprinkler pressure.  

Or something like that.

Waving Goodbye

The overcast day may have fit the occasion.  It was the second game of the season, and optimism reigned in Baltimore, but the tragic event from earlier in the week cast a shadow over such a frivolous event.  The temperature was a mild upper 50s with no perceptible breeze, but the clouds hung low, like it might rain at any moment.  I think my family felt its own personal version of this contradictory mood.  Only two weeks had passed since my mom had died.  We were processing, pusing forward, and hoping for moments of lightness.  I was grateful that Nancy and Sarah had pushed for this break.  

The game had started well for the home team, as last year’s rookie of the year, Gunnar Henderson, led off the home half of the first inning with a line drive home run.to right center.  But it was something that happened in the sixth inning that stands out for me as I look back.

It started in the center field bleachers, I think.  They had been making lots of noise all game long, led by a shirtless man who seemed the self-appointed cheerleader of the entire section.  At some point in the inning, I’m not exactly sure of the moment, the cheer man decided to start “the wave,” that stadium tradition that began back in the 80s.  

I was never a huge fan of the wave.  For one thing, it was distracting.  For another, it was usually such a letdown.  Some people were super excited about it, while others treated it as off-handedly as Billy Crystal and his friend in When Harry Met Sally.  Then there were the others who just refused to go along or got bored after the first go round.  That fading out part just seemed so anticlimactic.

This day in Baltimore, though, was different.  For one thing, the Orioles were in the midst of an epic nine-run inning that had the home crowd almost delirious.  For another, the process followed a different pattern.  When that centerfield contingent tried to get it going, they let out a burst of a cheer and began the motion, arms thrown high as they rose from their seats, arms dropped low as they reseated themselves, hoping to pass it down to the fans in right field.  That part of the crowd was apparently more interested in the game or their beer, because the wave just faded out in the right field corner.  

But the centerfield folks were undeterred.  They let out another whoop that seemed to grab the attention of the whole crowd.  This time the right field crew set aside their brew, and climbed on board.  They passed the wave to the right field corner and then down the first baseline.  Again, though, it trailed off as it reached the box seats behind the Orioles’ dugout.  Maybe the rich folks couldn’t be bothered to stand up for a second.  Maybe they (like me?) looked down their noses at a ritual like this.  By the time the wave got to the seats behind home plate, only a handful of fans participated.  

This is how most waves seemed to end, just petering out (an expression I never liked, but now seem compelled to use).  

Persistent or just stubborn, the centerfield crowd kept at it.  Fortunate that the inning seemed destined to continue for hours, with runs scoring with every at-bat, they launched yet another attempt.  This one caught on.  From center to right, past the foul pole and down the first base line, the noise and the motion swelled.  This time the box seaters joined the movement, and a much mightier wave approached and then rolled through our section on the third base line.  It roared into the left field corner and through the rowdy splash zone.  By the time it got back to where it had begun, the whole stadium had tuned in to the wave.  Now it gained strength and speed as it rolled around for a second lap.  As Henderson tripled in another run to make the score 9 to 1, the crowd was riding the euphoria of the game and its mighty wave.  Instead of dying out, this wave grew to tidal proportions.  While most wave attempts that I’d seen in recent times seemed to reflect an apathetic audience, a lack of cooperation or commitment, this one felt the opposite.  From a disinterested and disconnected birth, it grew to an energized youth, and then a full-grown interconnected supersonic orange and black behemoth.

And it didn’t stop.  Each time it completed a lap, the wave seemed to gather strength.  “Look, it’s in the upper decks, too!” someone shouted, and sure enough, the entire bowl had become one undulating roar…with no beach on which to crash.  A day that had seemed muted and even somber as the crowd filed in, had transformed into a crazy communal dancefest.  

For me, who entered the park mixing feelings of grief, nostalgia, and a longing for escape, this felt like a fitting wrap to my March.

Yes, farewell to March, a month of ups and downs, ebbs and flows, and back and forths.   I began the month describing moments from our family’s trip to Costa Rica, a week so eventful that I imagined pulling a story for each day in the month.  Those moments mostly represented ups, not downs, though the climate and the weather in Costa Rica provided some remarkable contrasts.  A week that began in the dense forests with rainy hikes and waterlogged shoes, ended on parched beaches with sunburnt feet.  It turned out, though, that I couldn’t write vacation memories for an entire month.

Around the Ides of March, the tide turned, and reality returned.  My mom finally ran out of the energy that had characterized most of her life.  She receded from this world, gradually and quietly, more like an ebb than a sudden stop.  And with that passing, my writing switched from recent memories to more distant ones, as I sifted through her belongings and tried to recall the more vital years instead of the later frail times.  

As my mom had weakened this winter, the back and forths between Connecticut and Maryland began.  Tedious drives on congested roads, with too little time between.  Nine tos and fros between Christmas and Easter have made the weeks and weekends pass quickly, but have left me longing for the waves to settle so I could have more idle times at home.

I’ve missed a significant part of the writing challenge, too, the reading of other writers’ stories, the feeling of learning their styles, their struggles and their triumphs.  My limited commenting made me feel like I was cheating on the challenge.  I was receiving, but not giving, a back and forth that didn’t happen.  I’m determined to go back and read the slices from some of my old friends.  I’ll content myself with “better late than never.”

In the meantime, I’m grateful for this challenge, the supportive community and those faithful (though neglected) commenters.  My writing was more schmaltzy or pitiful than I would have liked, but it helped me process and preserve the ups and downs.  For now, as I close an eventful month, I’ll ride the feeling of standing and cheering with my family, of living inside and observing from a distance, that boisterous, sustained, and sustaining wave that rippled through this March.