Doin’ The Happy Dance

O.k.

So.

Once upon a time ago my mom called me up and asked me to come up with a lie for her.

A lie to get her out of having to deal with her in-laws on her birthday - - - in-laws who are god-awful and were demanding that she come to their homes for a “birthday dinner”.

It had to be something good that they’d know they couldn’t be part of.

So, I came up with the story that as her birthday present I was taking her to the city for a show and dinner. Then I went ahead and made it not a lie and told her we’d actually do that anyway and that would just simply be her birthday gift.

And that was the plan.

December 11^th – City trip with mom.

Then today my boss hands me a scrap of paper with his scribble on it and asks me to create a “flyer” in my “spare time” from it if I didn’t mind.

Do I Mind?!?!?!?!?

Of COURSE not ! ! !

He’s HANDING me an excuse to play on PowerPoint (only my most favorite program in the basic MS Office package ! ! ! !)

Sure, this was a personal thing he was having me do for him - - - totally not business related - - - but so what ! It was a welcome break from the norm !

So off I went.

As I was working on this for him I realized that the event he was having me create this for was something I could potentially put in place of the pre-arranged trip that was to be mom’s birthday gift.

Apparently The Platters, The Coasters & The Drifters are going to be in New Jersey that day playing two shows - 3pm and 8pm.

So I call her up.

She was like “HECK YEAH !” and said she thought it would be considerably better than going to the city this time of year and standing at TKTS in the hopes of getting tickets to something we’d find at least slightly amusing.

We agreed to do the 3 pm show if possible.

So I told her I’d have to look into getting tickets and call her back.

I go online.

The first set of seats that’s offered to me?

5^th row center !

For the cheap cheap price of $45 a head ! ! ! !

DONE !

Bought them up and got my confirmation printed out - - - tickets will be at the booth the day of the show.

Then I called mom back. I casually told her that I’d managed to get tickets and asked for her fax number so I could send her a seating chart so she could see where we’d be sitting.

She gave it to me and we ended the call.

On the seating chart I’d printed out I wrote on the “stage” area “This is would be where The Platters, Coasters & Drifters will be”. I then circled our two seats and drew a line to the side of the paper and wrote “And THIS is where we are ! ! !”

Not 2 minutes later my phone rings.

It’s her.

And she’s actually excited !

She couldn’t BELIEVE I’d gotten such good seats and then demanded to know how much I’d spent on them.

I told her not to worry about that and that the seats were cheap considering how late in the game I got them and how good they are.

So, all in all I have to say

SCORE !

Not only did I just reduce the amount of time (train in & out of the city from NJ, trudging to Times Square, finding mom, waiting in the TKTS line, waiting for the show to start, trudging back to Penn) and money (broadway vs. Jersey state theater? No competition ! Plus train fare, dinner in the city, probably cab ride to and from Times Square) but I also just made my life considerably easier ! Mom will have to drive to MY house where I’ll be waiting. From there we’ll go grab lunch or something like that and head out to the theater which is 1 hour from my casa. I have no clue the length of the show, but at the end I only have 1 hour to drive to get back home and then she gets to go the rest of the way back to Connecticut. NICE !

PLUS !
I happen to like Doo Wop music ! It’s fun and I know the lyrics to most of the songs these groups will be singing ! So we both win with this deal !

Now…

What to get her for Christmas?!?!?!?!?