Rumble at the choral concert

I finally feel calm enough to write about the "incident" I have been referring to in my past couple posts, plus, most of my friends and co-workers have helped ease my conscience considerably (they're telling me that I am not an evil person.) I am going to try to keep this short, but we shall see…

Last Wednesday was my daughter’s 6th grade choral concert (I found out Monday that her black shoes were too tight and her black Capri pants were a little too short but that’s another story entirely.)

Anyway, we were all dressed and ready to go about 45 minutes ahead of schedule, which is rare, so we thought we should take advantage of this and get to the school early. (The choral concert also includes the band and jazz band performances, and because there are so many kids in the 5th and 6th grades, they do each grades' concert on separate days.)

As we were walking through the parking lot, we passed a sweet mother daughter moment where the mom was giving her daughter a quick hug before the girl ran into the school. But you know the proverb, "Never judge a book by its cover?" Well, this saying played out about five minutes later inside the auditorium.

My husband and I walked into the auditorium and I noticed that we weren’t as early as I thought-there was quite a crowd already seated and as my husband ushered my daughter out towards the music room, he gestured over at some empty seats about three rows from the front on the right side of the room (my daughter assured us that she would be standing on the risers facing this section of the room.)

I walked up to two people on the end of the row and asked if any of the seats next to them were taken. Since they answered "No" I quickly glanced down the row-there were three women sitting at the other end but quite a few empty seats in the middle, so I took my son’s hand and started walking in.

I was just putting my things down when a woman walked up to me and said in a terse tone,

"How many seats do you need?"

Without looking up (I was taking off my son’s coat at the time) I told her I only needed three seats. Her reply was that she needed four but I really wasn’t paying attention to her to realize that she was not happy. Irritated she said,


"Well this isn’t going to work,"

and her tone of voice finally caught my attention and I turned to look at her. Guess who I saw glaring at me? Yep, you guessed it-that same loving woman I saw only five minutes earlier in the parking lot.

I was more than a little startled because I didn’t understand why this woman was still talking to me and why she was angry-the only thing I can say is that it had been a hectic day at work and I had quite a few things on my mind, so the obvious wasn’t obvious. I shrugged my shoulders and started to sit down and that’s when the full fury of this woman was unleashed. She started screaming at me at the top of her lungs saying a lot of things like

"How dare you!" and "Don’t you know that I got here first?" 

and insinuating that I had no moral character whatsoever. (I also want to add that this woman was huge both in height and girth and she was towering over me as she screamed. She also tried to get everyone else to notice my apparent insensibility by addressing the people in the rows around us and wildly waving her arms.)

At this point I looked to my left and noticed that there were only three available seats and the whole scope of this situation hit me at last-this woman was accusing me of stealing seats. A lot started going on in my head at that moment-a part of me wished madly for my husband to get back, a part thought I should get up and get the heck away from this woman, and the other part (the one I am totally baffled by) decided to just stay seated. You see, I am not one to draw attention to myself, and my friends and co-workers all know me as the "peace maker"-I try to get along with everybody. (Okay, I might still argue with my husband but that doesn’t count.)

I anxiously looked over at my son who was staring at this woman open-mouthed, and once again I told myself to get out of there, that any decent mother would leave, but I couldn’t move. I guess I was silently protesting, just sitting staring straight ahead until this woman either hit me (and I really thought she would), we would be asked to leave, or she gave up.

Thankfully she decided to move on, and would you believe that she found four seats together in the front row-right in front of me? She turned around shouting (just like she was on stage),

"Now here are four seats together and these people have no problem with my family sitting here."

She stopped rather abruptly and sat down and I looked to see why-my husband was making his way down the row towards me. He started asking what was going on and I whispered back that apparently I am a seat thief and for him to just sit down. He did so but not without shouting, "Is it that big mouth there?" Let’s just say that if I could have sunk into the floor I would have, and after giving him my death stare he sat down.

I had to watch this woman be-bopping her head during the entire concert, and when my daughter took the stage, I couldn’t see her because this woman’s daughter decided to stand fully turned to face the audience! She smiled at her mother while her mother sang along (I am not exaggerating), and I just hoped for an end to this evening.

My daughter saw my face after the concert and asked what was bothering me, and let’s just say I never walked as fast as I did that night-I just wanted out of there! As we headed for home, I gave a slimmed down version of the "incident"while my husband laughed-he still thinks it’s funny and is now referring to me as "the bruiser." I also covertly asked whether my daughter was friends with the girl who stood in front of her-her response (thankfully) was no, so I am hoping that I will never meet this woman again (at least not until next year’s concert-wish me luck…)