I decided to see the first show of “Shrek”..the musical, based on the movie…at the Muny.
Here’s a song from the musical, which I took from Youtube…
Having gone late (I missed the Muny trolley from De Baliviere as well) , I was sitting in the back row, as usual, but the children in front of me kept standing up. I didn’t want to tell them to sit down, they were enjoying themselves so much. So I got up and was standing behind the back row. An usher politely told me I had to sit down, and found another place for me. After sitting down, I realized the big Muny fan was blocking my view. So at the break, I went to the toilet (long pee queue) and then came back and sat in my original seat.
Then a man came up to me and said, "Did you see my child's cup?" I said no. After another 20 minutes, he came back again and said, "If you give me back my cup, I won't say anything about the purse." He said some lady had lost her purse. I didn't want to be badgered by him, So I got up and went to the ushers and told them what had happened.
I pointed to the man. When they called him over, I voluntarily opened my bag and showed the contents to them. Both the man and the ushers were profusely apologetic. I broke down and cried. This perplexed the House Manager, whose name is Kwofe Coleman. He expected me to be angry, but not to cry!. He took me down to the plaza,, and another usher, and he, comforted me. I tried to switch on the phone to call Anjana, and it wouldn't switch on. This made me cry a little more! I didn't ask Kwofe to call her. I gave him my Citizen Matters visiting card and told him I am from India. He gave me his number and asked me to call the next day. I went back and watched the last half an hour or so, but the evening was totally spoilt, and certainly I missed a lot of it (it was very good.) I walked back to Forest Park Station and A picked me up.
I called Kwofe up the next day, and he said he'd give me tickets on the house, any day that I liked. So, on Thursday the 27th, my friend Ruth Hartsell and I went to the show. I'd packed an Indian dinner for her, and an American dinner (macaroni and cheese, that I'd made for KTB's dinner) for myself. We enjoyed the show very much indeed. I went up to Kwofe again, and said I'd email him and thank him, and the Muny, for their Muny-ficience! I decided to write this blogpost, describing the whole incident.
But...don't think that's the end of the strange happenings. On Monday evening, I was walking along Union Blvd, photographing some of the old buildings, and turned left into Delmar, on my way home. Suddenly, a flatbed van stopped near me, and someone said, "Madam!"
I am not used to running if addressed by strangers, so I stopped...and guess who it was...the man who had accused me! He shook me by the hand, and said he'd been feeling very bad about what had happened. Seeing his really troubled face, I felt that what had passed was no longer a problem, and told him to forget it. We exchanged notes about ourselves for a while. His name is Joseph (alas, I've forgotten his last name, and forgot to take a photo of him, I was so rattled by the coincidence!). He's a retired firefighter...he was invalided out when he was rescuing a 400-lb man from a fire and got injured. He now runs an auto mechanice shop business out of home, and has four children. I told him a bit more about myself, and asked him to email me the letter he said he'd written to me. (He hasn't yet sent it, though.)
Ironically, he asked me to be careful in walking down Delmar Blvd and asked me if he could give me a lift home. I am not comfortable taking lifts from unknown people (I held no rancour about what had happened, but he was still a stranger) so I said I needed the excercise. We parted on very amicable terms.
Life is so strange! What were the odds of my meeting that man again? It was sheer chance that I decided to walk down Union and turned at Delmar…and that he happened to be passing at the same time, and also, recognized me. All’s well that ends well…looking forward to our family trip to Washington, D C, tomorrow…I hope the fireworks are great on the 4th of July!
