Orchestrating Disaster

I should have known when I fell off the toilet this morning that it was going to be a day to stay home. However, as I lay there on the floor with a toilet seat stuck to my butt and my pants down around my ankles, the clues just seemed to pass me by.

My husband likes gadgets and things that qualify as "cool engineering." So when he replaced all the toilet seats in our house, he used these fancy ones with quick release snaps on the back.

"Look honey," he said with excitement as he showed off the new seats to me. "They just snap right off for easier cleaning."

"Great," I thought. "Anything to make scrubbing a toilet more accessible."

I never realized that a quick release toilet seat would come with a down side. Cool engineering isn't always safe engineering, needless to say. My easy-to-snap-off seat launched me off the pot and onto the floor when I leaned over to shut the door this morning. There I was just asking for a little privacy and attempting to shut the door that never latches on the first try, when in a flash I was recklessly tossed from one of the most vulnerable positions a person assumes. It gives new meaning to the concept of being "dethroned."

So after my traumatic ride in the bathroom, you would think that it would be enough to say maybe today is not a day to attempt great things. But I just didn't see it. Today we were going to have another family outing and it was going to be as successful as the last one. To celebrate our first wedding anniversary, Chris and I had decided to spend it as a family by going down to Dayton with Mariella for the day. I had done a little research and discovered that the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra had joined that weekend with a puppet troupe from Cincinnati for a kid friendly performance at the Schuster Center. It was a Sunday afternoon show on a beautiful day and we were excited to take her to her first live performance.

When we got there, I realized it was going to be bigger than I had expected. I had envisioned something small, more intimate with maybe a few hundred people tops. No. This was in the main hall which includes several levels of balcony seating, and almost every seat was filled. I figured we could just buy tickets at the door. In reality, there were about ten seats left and we were lucky to get a spot that didn't require binoculars and oxygen masks. As we approached the ticket window Chris looked down and said, "Oh, money. Get it." He was carrying Mariella so I bent down and grabbed it. Two dollars.

"Did you drop it?" I asked him.
"No, I just saw it lying there."
"Oh, well, should we just leave it?"
"No, just take it," he said, so I pocketed the change and we moved on.

We went to the counter and bought two seats. Thirty-two dollars. For a puppet show on a Sunday. It's ironic how you pay through the nose for seats for the people who are really just the chauffeur and concierge for the person who has really come to see the show. And thirty-two bucks? It better be a hell of a show, I thought but from the level just below the ozone, who'd know the difference?

We took an elevator to our seats and had to climb over an entire family to get to them. As soon as we sat down, Chris said, "Do you smell something? I think I smell poopy."

"Seriously?" I said, out of breath and low on oxygen. "I just changed her. Damn it. Ok. I'll take her to the bathroom. We'll be right back."

And we climbed back over the family, who was getting increasingly annoyed and making snide comments under their breath. Off to the bathroom we went, only to find out that I was foiled again by the Poop Phantom. Nothing. Just a little pee pee. Ugh. So I changed her anyway and we went back to our seats. By this time the show had started so the annoyed family was really fuming now.

It had gotten darker and the music and actors were quite loud. Mariella looked around in amazement and then the crowd clapped at something happening on stage. Mariella's face changed suddenly. The actors said something and it got very quiet. Just then, Mariella screamed and began to cry. Her voice filled the entire hall and echoed all around us. The actors stopped dead in their tracks and looked up and the audience began to laugh. In an instant we managed to disrupt the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra to the point of stopping the show.

I was mortified. Chris started laughing and tried to shush our hysterical daughter. But she just got more and more upset. The actors attempted to go on with the show but it was clear that our presence was going to make that impossible. The annoyed family at the end of the row turned and shot us disgusted glares.

"Lets' just go," I said. "We have to get out of here. Now." I was panicking and every second that ticked by was filled with Mariella's extreme discontent. We had to get her out of there.

So, we grabbed up our stuff and headed out, clamoring over the really, really pissed-off family for one last time. We regrouped out in the hall and got her settled down. Then, I set about getting our money back. Thirty-two dollars for five minutes of a show we destroyed was not going to fly.

After wrestling with the ticket lady to get a full refund, we headed back to the parking garage where we had pre-paid seven dollars for event parking. Instead of doing the smart thing and calling it a wash, I stubbornly thought, "Well we paid for the parking, we may as well make the most of it." So we got the stroller and headed to the park on the riverfront. It was hot enough to melt lead, though, and Mariella fussed the whole way. We sweat, squinted and suffered five blocks there and five blocks back. Not really worth seven dollars if you ask me but by the time we got back to the garage I had finally been beaten into submission. So we packed everything up and headed home.

After a few cool and quiet minutes in the car, Chris said, "Well look at the bright side, honey. After all that, we actually made two dollars today."

He was right. The money we found on the floor! So, not many people can say that they crapped out all day long and still found themselves up a few bucks by the end of the day. But we did. I guess if getting thrown across the room by your toilet and ruining a professional orchestral show for thousands of people is worth two bucks, then all in all we had a good day. I'll just count it a win and put the money towards a new toilet seat.