I
went to a performance of a new musical play, Parcel from America, at the
Irish Heritage Center in Chicago last weekend. It had a heartwarming
resolution, perfect for the Holidays, likely to become a kind of It’s A
Wonderful Life tradition for smaller theaters around town.
I
had a little trouble getting into the spirit of the afternoon though. Before
the performance started, I was put in a grumpy mood by the gyrations of one of
the audience members. I recognized her as being one of the regular hosts of PBS-TV’s
pledge nights. Her appearances there irritated me. She always seemed to be so
mindlessly bubbly as she solicited funds and introduced each new segment of the
special programming. Her uniform boosterism and effervescence often seemed out
of place. She would burst into the midst of a program about the Holocaust with
her usual hyper enthusiasm. She’d gush, “Wow! Isn’t that great! What an
important history lesson!”
None
of the solemnity or grandeur of any of the programming ever seemed to register
with her. Her predictable “Wows!” always smacked of a teenager’s babblings
about who-likes-who in 5th period English class. Now here was this
woman again, characteristically flitting around the auditorium, greeting people
in rapid succession, supervising who should sit where, changing her own seat
repeatedly, laughing, shuffling people’s coats here and there. Just as her
bubbly appearances on TV exhausted me, the woman was exhausting me here in
person.
Her
skimming flightiness was turning me into the perfect Scrooge. I was mentally
grumbling “What an airhead! Sit down and relax already! Silent night, please!”
But
then, a Christmas miracle. The woman oddly paused in mid-sweep down the aisle
next to me. She paused, and looked down with intent friendliness at me for a
moment. It wasn’t as if she seemed to think she knew me. We’d never met. I’d
never volunteered at the local PBS station on any of the nights when she was
hosting. But it was as if she suddenly realized some transcendent kinship
between us. She paused – and lit up with a sincere, staying smile.
When
she moved on, resuming her social butterfly briefness, I thought, “What a nice
woman!”
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