We got free tickets to see Disney on Ice. Impossible to resist. The 11:30 showtime would force me to stay sober while drowning in the world’s biggest daycare, but the Cox Suite promised free food and soft drinks and free-range babies. G was psyched, as she always is. She was also uncharacteristically bitchy.
She strutted in, she demanded food, she demanded a seat, she demanded food, she demanded a seat, she demanded a drink with her food and would not sit in her seat. She wanted to touch all the dessert trays and snack bowls and demanded her food and her seat – she knows better, they don’t pull that shit in daycare.
The last few years have been a boon to have access to all the events we have. I feel compelled to ask for tickets whenever available because its such a privilege to get such awesome seats to such premiere events. I get it that G doesn’t have a notion of the $300-amazing-family-experience that has just landed in our lap, but I try to inspire in her an appreciation for how much special fun we will have. Mostly I succeed. Being spoiled is not ugly if you are sweet while reveling in it – just look at my dog. Hence my disappointment and chagrin at her disinterest and sense of entitlement. She is usually so much better? 
I want to cut her some slack on some things, like it being earlier in the day and her not wanting to sit still. Or even think still. Live entertainment is slower, and more focused than TV. Its faster in its way, but those moments of the puck getting 1-timed at 90mph are strewn wantonly amidst set changes, tv breaks, and referee meetings. G is definitely…not short-attention…but a smart little girl of the internet age. You need to own her interest.
And, the suite isolates you too much from the live experience. Its certainly more convenient, just like your living room. You can move and run around and stretch and scratch your balls and get some cookies and chicken fingers from the kitchen . You can do everything but pause the Tivo. The suite is far superior for the family as a whole, but you lose so much of what makes the event special. You are not amongst the groundlings, where friendships and rivalries develop with strangers, where you don’t climb all over the furniture cause someone will call the usher if they dont smack you first. You don’t feel the rumble of 10,000 people jumping and clapping, have your vision filled by a behemoth NBA center dwarfing over his trainers, or hear the thack thack thack thack thack of a puck skittering along the boards. I get ansty in the suite sometimes too. Plays, musicals, the circus…for me at least…require so much more attention and focuson top of it all. There are few highlights – more tension and drama that you immerse yourself in, which when done right, build on themselves as the show progresses. Its been years since I have given myself over to a play; its been 5 years since I’ve been to a movie or a stand-up show.
G’s behavior is somewhat fitting, given that of her parents, even if she is the root of it. But I have chosen my internet and WFH and rides in unpopulated spaces vs. suffering the public or my child in public. I know the alternatives, and respect their value and their costs. G has not and does not. G is selfish, in a completely non-pejorative sense. There are single moms paying, perhaps a lot, for seats in the upper deck and for expensive concessions so that they might share a day with their kids. I wish G was more appreciative of the good fortune she has in having parents with hook-ups, but I’m just not sure how much she ever will given these conditions. I am disappointed in both of us for having so indulged her. She needs to suffer on a ride with me, get some reality back into her fantasy.
Against the backdrop of it all, another circumstance in my pre-disenfranchised kid’s favor, it that Disney is a franchise, in a way I’ve never before appreciated, cause it moved so glacially slow i never noticed. The movie Cars came out 4 years ago, but Disney maintains the site and the franchise as if its current. Bolt (by Disney), Finding Nemo and others that I thought are way better movies are…well…movies. They came, we saw, they conquered, we burned pirated copies. The things Disney chooses to make their flagships stick around a long long time. Why? They all are vaguely dated, dull, ‘merican, and sexist, even Cars, even before they stick around a long long time. Minnie Mouse could not change a flat tire to save her life, and 50 or 60 years later, neither can the female Porsche Carrera Sally who gave up her job as an attorney to WAHT?!? crusie the slow lane and be Lightning McQueen’s girl. They play these scenes over and over, almost right out of the movies, but dumbed down and slowed down like a Broadway-Americana-40’s-Attention-Span-Review, on ice. Even the multi colored groundlights with the multi-shaped templates that made the ice look like any background on the computer could not do enough to make it as good.
too much analysis? It could be i’ve ruined my daughter and am using my silver tongue to excuse it, like David Caruso pretending to be Steve Carrell pretending to be David Caruso in Jade? It could be that she just likes hockey better.