From Your First Cigarette to Your Last Dyin' Day

Do you ever have ideas that aren't compatible with real life?  How about ideas that morph as the execution of the idea gets closer?  And while we're using the word "execution," do you ever take a five-year-old to a musical in which three people are murdered?

I do.  I got tickets for Davis High's production of West Side Story for everyone in the family except Tziporah before I realized that, while precocious, she still isn't old enough to stay home alone.  So Scott stayed home and I went with an assortment of 7 kids.  I sat next to Ptolemy, who is generally pretty agreeable about sitting through things.  He was great this time, too, with the familiar music and the dancing.  He pored over the program, sounding out names and memorizing faces.  He enthusiastically pointed to several kids he recognized from last spring's Beauty and the Beast, including Collin, who played Riff.  At intermission, though, he proclaimed like a little prince, "I've seen enough!  Drive me home!"

I suppose it slipped my mind that the second half was full of knife-wielding, gut-wrenching tragedy.  By the end of the rumble, with Bernardo and Riff lying dead under the highway, Ptolemy was pretty forlorn.  Riff was his buddy from past plays, after all.  I think he was in denial.  When Tony got shot and was dying in Maria's arms, Ptolemy whispered loudly, "He is reeeeeeally tired!"  I have to tell you, I was starting to feel like a terrible parent.

Never in my life have I been so happy to see the characters come back from the dead for their curtain calls!  I'm pretty sure Ptolemy felt the same way.  Even if there was little redemption in West Side Story, there was redemption on the third row that night when my five-year-old saw that, indeed, no teenagers were harmed in the making of the high school musical.