Much Ado About Nothing – “Musically Challenged”
I recently took my favorite engineer to a concert by the local symphony orchestra. In and of itself, this isn’t the dumbest idea I’ve ever had. He is, by all accounts, an intelligent, well-rounded, culturally-cognizant human. No, the dumbest idea I’ve ever had was taking him to hear the local symphony orchestra after letting him sample the evening’s specialty drink offered in the concert hall’s donors lounge beforehand: some crazy concoction of pretty, amber-colored alcohols with a “feisty splash of orange” guaranteed to nail your butt to the auditorium seat for the full 95 minutes plus intermission.
While nearly the entire audience was enraptured by Dvorak’s Symphony Number 7, there were a countable few who were obviously listening with their eyes closed and their chins on their chests. I’m guessing they’d been bamboozled by the bartender as well and were trying to just sleep it off before driving home.
But not my engineer. No, he’d gotten himself tickled somewhere between the Allegro maestoso and the poco adagio and was quickly succumbing to a fit of the giggles. Of course, classical music giggles rank second only to church and funeral giggles, don’t you know, so no amount of elbowing and shushing on my part were going to stop them. I’m talking about full body shaking, muffled snorts, tears on face giggles. Oh but wait, he’s then compelled to whisper to me that he’s sure he’s heard this same song conducted by Bugs Bunny. That just didn’t help.
Then, somewhere right before intermission, an older gentleman seated down front and center started a coughing fit that could easily have been misconstrued to be an end-of-life death rattle from where we were sitting. I pointed out to my still smirking seatmate that it could be him next if he didn’t put a cork in it! That did help.
So here’s the really funny thing about it: he actually loved the music and the concert, so much so that by the end of the violin concerto, he was practically conducting from row 28, seat 15. After the final “Bravos!” and applause from an enthusiastic standing ovation – Not for him. No, please, don’t encourage him – he stopped at the box office on the way to the parking lot and bought two tickets to the next concert! Lord, pray for me!
