Seeing That Purple Dinosaur

I have been so busy this week that I haven’t had time to sit down and take the amount of time it takes for me to create a new blog post.  So I thought I would throw out a “really” old story that I had on an old web page (from way back in 1997!)  I made a few revisions to bring it up to date a bit and changed a few names to protect the innocent <GRIN>.  It is nothing like my normal posts, it is longer than most of my posts (way longer), but it will give you a chuckle if you want to take the time to read it.

My niece was just a month shy of three years old when we embarked on an innocent little trip to Nashville so she could see “That Purple Dinosaur Live” The two day journey turned into quite an adventure!  That Wednesday morning dawned not exactly “bright.”  I suppose you could have called it down-right dreary.  There was rain, wind, flooding, thunderstorms, and to top it off tornadoes bouncing around in our little valley and we were driving right through them.

I had to drop a friend from Maryland off at the Crown Plaza hotel in downtown Nashville.  She’d been visiting in Knoxville and had meetings in Nashville.  So instead of renting a car, she hitched a ride with us so we could catch up.  When I asked the doorman at the Crown Plaza if he knew how to get to the {unnamed hotel, that we got with a discount card}, I thought he hesitated just a second or two, then he actually laughed and gave me directions.  They were pretty good, or would have been pretty good if we would have followed them!  I made a few minor changes to the directions, ended up taking a different bridge and somehow got to the hotel from the opposite direction than he sent us!  Hey, don’t ask…it’s a gift!  I used to drive in circles quite nicely.

Remember, it had been raining for days in Tennessee by this time.  We got to the hotel parking lot and breathed a sigh of relief.  When we walked into the lobby there was a really musty odor.  Our very first thought was to turn around and walk back out the door; but then we gave them the benefit of the doubt and thought that maybe it was just because of all the rain.  So we checked in.  By this time we had also forgotten about the one hour time difference.  I looked at my watch and saw that it was nearly six o’clock (or so I thought), so we dashed up to the room and deposited our stuff and dashed back out to try and find a quick bite to eat before we had to be at the auditorium.  At least the room didn’t smell musty.

There was a familiar restaurant down the street from the hotel, so we decided to hit it.  We figured, “They always have a hot food bar.  That will be fast.”  Tsk, tsk, tsk…  We went in and were seated.  We ordered three “hot bars.”  We knew what we meant and we sort of figured that the waitress did also.  My sister-in-law went to fill my niece’s plate and I stayed at the table with her.  The sister-in-law came back a few minutes later.  She was walking slowly and carrying a measly plate with a few crusty tatter tots and a couple of pieces of dried-up chicken.  She said, “This is all they have.  There is nothing else but salad.”  So when the waitress came by we questioned her about the “hot bar.”  She said she thought we said “salad bar.”  They didn’t have a hot bar yet, just the salad bar.  Well, she and I canceled our “salad bar” orders and tried to get my niece to eat the tatter tots and chicken.  She wasn’t having any of it.  So we wrapped it up in a napkin and hoped she would eat it later.

By this time our watches told us it was twenty minutes until seven.  The show was supposed to start at seven; and we weren’t exactly sure where we were going.  Although, yes, we had passed the place a couple of times earlier (while I was doing that driving in circles thing), but we weren’t sure how to get back over to that area!  So we rushed out of there and got back over to the other side of town to the auditorium.  When we got there, we found a parking lot very close to the auditorium.  How lucky!  Then as we were walking to the building I told my sister-in-law, “You know, there were not many people parked there in that parking lot.  I wonder if it’s safe?  I wonder if it’s safe to even be walking here this time of night.”  We both looked around and didn’t see very many people anywhere.  We held onto my niece’s hand a little tighter and hurried our pace a bit.

When we got to the lobby of the auditorium we noticed that there were only three or four families there.  We couldn’t figure out where anyone was.  I looked at my watch and it was five minutes till seven by then.  My sister-in-law said, “Well, maybe that purple dinosaur is late?”  I didn’t know.  They had the inner doors locked and you couldn’t get any farther than the outside lobby.  We were so hungry!  Just inside the door, through the glass we could see the concession stand.  They had hot-dogs, pizza, chips, pretzels, popcorn, you know…food!  We were so hungry by this time.  The security people and the people that worked at the auditorium all came out of this one door and filed into the inside.  I told the sister-in-law, “Huh… that purple dinosaur must be expecting trouble tonight.  There were quite a few people who had ‘Security’ written on their shirts—more security that I would have thought that purple dinosaur would have required.  He must hang out with some pretty rough kids!”

About that time I happened to look at my watch.  It said 7:10.  Right at that very moment was when it hit me about the time difference!  I looked over at my sister-in-law and said, “Do you know what time it is here?  We both just started dying laughing.  It was so funny.  Here we had run around like crazy to get over there and it was just then 6:10 (Nashville time).  All we wanted at that point was to get inside and get something to eat!  We were starved!  We did not have time to get lunch or dinner!

When we got inside, we got some hot-dogs and chips and other stuff.  It wasn’t very nutritional, but it was food.  We went down to the floor to find our “ninth row” seats.  You must remember that I ordered these tickets over the telephone and I was led to believe that these were ninth row “back” from the stage.  That’s why we both took a day and a half off work.  The only seats we could get for the weekend shows were in the second balcony.  Needless to say, our seats were NOT nine rows back from the stage (oh baby were they not!)  We were off to the side, two sections back, first balcony, and nine rows up (to begin with anyhow).  I will NEVER trust that particular “ticket broker” again.  We found an usher, gave him our tickets, and he took us to our seats.  The ushers were all grumbling something about “They’ve changed the seating around and we don’t know where half the seats are.”

Finally, we were sitting there enjoying ourselves.  There was a couple in front of us who had driven up from Huntsville, Alabama to bring their kids.  There were some people behind us from Knoxville.  My sister-in-law even saw someone she knew from our area.  Everyone seemed to be having an enjoyable time.  My niece was so excited.  She couldn’t wait to see that purple dinosaur.  The very second (seriously! The VERY second) that the lights went down and the show started these three women came up the stairs dragging a passel of kids with them – and headed straight for our seats.  I knew there would be trouble just by looking at them.  To begin with, HOW rude is it to come slinking in after the show starts and everyone else is trying to watch.  (I have a real thing about people being late!  <grin>)  Anyhow, it seems that the usher had brought us to the wrong seats!  These three women were not being very nice about it either.  They were standing there, being very ugly, and telling us they didn’t care about any kind of mixup, to get out of their seats.  The blonde, big-haired bomber declared that they’d paid for six seats on that row and they wanted them—now…period.  OK.  I was getting just a “little” ticked off by this time.  Not only were they rude, they were RUDE!  For one thing, those three cows were standing there in the row and there was no way to get around them. What did they want us to do, climb over?  The lady on the other side of my sister-in-law had just spread out with her nachos and was relaxing, so we couldn’t get out that way quickly.  The sister-in-law was waiting for the lady to get the nachos out of the way enough so that we could give the hateful people their hateful seats.

The actual, main problem was, there was nowhere to go!  The next section over, which was supposed to be our section, only had four seats in it; and we had seats 4, 5, and 6.  OK, what’s the deal?  Well, there was one seat in row nine and one seat in row ten.  So we took those just to get out of everyone’s way and sit down and watch the show.  The two of them were sitting in row nine and I was right behind them.  We were all sitting up there like we’d just been beaten with a stick.  You know how sometimes things just really get you?  That was one of those times, and, just sayin’, there are not many times that sister-in-law gets “got.” My niece could sense that we were upset and she was just sitting there with her hands in her lap; not enjoying herself either, and we are talking about a “that purple dinosaur” princess here!  I was sitting back there getting more and more angry.  I went and found an usher (the same slacker who’d sat us in the wrong seats in the first place) and explained to him that there were no seats where we were supposed to be sitting.  He just looked at me like I was crazy and went down past section three and marched up the stairs.  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight……. whoops!  There was no row nine at that end of the section.  I just looked at him like ,”HA!”  He rolled his eyes and pointed over to where we were already sitting and told us to just sit there.  Slacker, slacker, slacker, slacker, slacker!  I went back up and sat down and pulled my niece back there with me.  She was into that purple dinosaur by this time and singing and dancing and enjoying herself.

I also knew that my sister-in-law was probably over being stunned and was probably pretty ticked off by then also.  So, when the lights came up for intermission, I pulled the tickets out of my pocket and handed them to her and told her to go and find someone and tell them that we paid for these tickets (for seats that didn’t even exist apparently!) and we expect something to be done.  So she went and found a different usher and explained the situation to him.  He went and got a manager.  The manager came over there and she explained the situation all over again.  She came back up there with this disgusted look on her face and said that the manager had the tickets and she didn’t know if we’d ever see them again.  The lady that was sitting at the end of that same row was so nice.  Apparently she’d had the same problem, minus the roller derby mommas.  So she just sat there on the end with her two kids.  A few minutes later the manager came back and motioned my sister-in-law to come back down there.  Yes, they had sold us tickets that did not exist.  DUH! Vindication!  OK so we weren’t insane.  What they did about it was this:  they had four comp seats on the front  row of the section over on the other side of the stage that people had not claimed and they were going to let us have them.  OK, “That’s a good deal.” as my niece would say.  So we moved over there to the front and all was well.  There was no one in front of us and my niece had room to get up and sing and dance and have a good time.  You should have seen the looks on the “hateful” women’s faces when they moved us over to the front row. HA!!!  na na na na na na!

We had one other little problem when we moved over closer to that purple dinosaur.  Somehow, my niece had gotten it into her head that she was going to be up on stage with that purple dinosaur.  The child has always thought if there is a stage, she needs to be on it!  So we had to keep a close eye on her to make sure she didn’t dash up there!  She was convinced that she should be up there singing and dancing with him.  She couldn’t understand why she was not up there.  At the end of the show, that purple dinosaur said his good-byes and told everyone good night.  We gathered my niece and all her ‘that purple dinosaur paraphernalia together and were getting ready to leave.  She grabs at me and says, “Wait…wait a minute.” and starts to run back toward the stage.  She said, “I have to tell that purple dinosaur something.  I have to tell that purple dinosaur something.”  We had to grab hold of her again.   She was determined that she had to tell that purple dinosaur something. Well, that purple dinosaur (being the smart dinosaur that he is) had already flown the coop.  We told her that he was already gone and she’d have to tell him something next time.  She was so sad.  She had the most pitiful look on her little face.  When we were almost out the door I asked her what she wanted to tell that purple dinosaur.  She says, “I wanted to tell him that I love him.”  My sister-in-law and I both were like, “Ahhhhhh.”  I told her that we would sit down and write that purple dinosaur a letter and she could tell him that she loves him.  That seemed to pacify her for the moment.

We got back to the motel.  Tisk-tisk-tisk! When we went back up to the room and really looked at it, we were like, “Ah man!”  The bathroom was nasty!  We wondered how difficult it would be to crash with my friend at the Crown Plaza! But we were so tired and it was so late (after 11PM Knoxville time – and that’s the time our bodies were on!), we decided to stay anyhow and just go to bed.  The beds looked fairly clean.  We just tried not to think about it.  The next morning when we were starting to get cleaned up, we looked at the bathtub and just didn’t know about it.  I had a bottle of hand sanitizer in my purse.  My sister-in-law took it and used the whole bottle to “sanitize” the bathtub so we could give my niece a bath and get showers ourselves.  Then we went downstairs for the “Free Continental Breakfast”.  Ah yes…. Can you EVEN imagine where this is going?

You know, we should have known better than to try it.  Look how our trip had already gone.  We’d wanted food for a whole day by then and were not having any luck.  We just should have known better.  We walked into the dining room and there were any number of odd-looking characters in there.  They were running in and out of the kitchen.  As soon as I walked in and saw this guy sitting at the table picking his nose and looking at it, I knew I could NOT eat a bite of anything that was in the place.  Then we saw the “continental breakfast.”  It consisted of three kinds of cereal and three loaves of bread and two toasters.  That got me right there.  There was no way, no how, no nothing that would have made me have a piece of toast and told my sister-in-law so immediately.  I told her that I didn’t want any toast where everyone in the room had had their hand in the bread bag.  She agreed.  We thought the cereal was harmless enough. It was in a container and you had to use a scoop to get it out; and the milk was in a machine.  So I tried a bowl of cereal.    I was sitting there playing with the cereal.  I just couldn’t eat it.  I was too grossed out.  My niece didn’t seem to want to eat either.  The sister-in-law was just sitting there eating her cereal and my niece and I were sitting there playing in ours.  She looked at me like, “Aren’t you going to even try to eat?”  I told her there was just no way that I could even take a bite of it.  We decided to just leave it.  My niece, in the meantime, was sitting there staring at all these folks.  Looking around the room was pretty scary.  We really did not know what part of town we’d landed in.  We’d stayed here?  With our BABY??!! Needless to say, we were out of there pretty quick.   It was kind of creepy.

We went back up to the room to pack and get out of Dodge!  On the way out, we were standing there waiting for the elevator to come and take us away from all of it. My niece was standing right smack dab in front of the elevator doors.  When the elevator doors opened, this huge German shepherd jumped out and nearly jumped on top of her.  My sister-in-law pulled her around behind her.  She and I just looked at each other like, “Did I really just see a humongous dog jump out of that elevator?”  Yep. We did.  OK, so we thought maybe it’s a blind person and this is their seeing-eye dog.  Wrong.  It was some other shady-looking dude and he could see just fine, or so it seemed from the way he looked us up and down.  He pulled the dog back in the elevator and said, “He’s friendly, he’s friendly.”  I’m thinking,”The dog is not the only one who seems to be friendly!”  We got on the elevator (Yes, we did. Don’t’ ask!)  The dog was about the same height as my niece.  Again, at one point my sister-in-law had to pull her behind her to keep the dog from licking right in the face.

We left our key at the desk and went to the car.  We weren’t saying much.  It was a solemn moment.  At least it had quit raining and it was a beautiful, sunshiny day.  As we were pulling out onto the highway, My sister-in-law looked at me and said, “You know…people who come back from vacations and say they’ve had a wonderful time?”  I said, “Yea.”  She said, “They are all a bunch of liars!  They have to be.  We can’t be the only people in the world that this kind of thing happens to.”  I totally agreed with her.

We drove around until we found the McDonald’s that we’d spotted on the way back to the motel the night before.  As we were going in the door, My sister-in-law looked at me and said, “Don’t think about it. Don’t look.  Don’t even think about thinking about it.  Just order and eat!”  I’d try.  When we got inside, again, it wasn’t the cleanest McDonald’s I’d ever been in, but…I’d try.  It was really crowded, people-to-people crowded.  We were standing in line and I was holding my niece.  She popped out with a very loud, “I smell something.”  Oh it wasn’t a dainty little, “I smell something.”  It was one of those — did you hear me on the next block all you stinky, sweaty people.  Her momma and I just looked at each other and then she said, “I think it’s where that dog licked me.”  We cracked up.  Her mom told her, “That dog did not lick you.”  She was convinced that he did and she didn’t like it.  In the meantime, I was trying NOT to look around too closely.  I tried….  I did happen to look back in the kitchen area.  There was an older lady standing back there wiping her nose on her shirt sleeve.  It wasn’t one of those little “twitch” scratches of the nose.  She took her shirt sleeve and pulled it across her face.  I just closed my eyes and swallowed…hard.  When it was my time to order, I didn’t know what to do.  Sister-in-law was looking at me, and she meant business!  So I ordered a hash brown and a muffin.  I reasoned that I could see the hash browns and they didn’t touch them with their hands.  The muffins are sealed in plastic; so there.

We ate our breakfast without incident. As we were getting ready to leave, my sister-in-law went to the car to get my niece’s thermos so she could rinse it out.  My niece looked up at me and said, “Hold me.”  So I leaned over to pick her up.  As I did, I knocked my soda, that I’d only taken a sip or two out of,  onto the floor and it splattered everywhere–the table, the floor, the chairs, the wall…<sigh>…..  I just sat there, with soda dripping all around, looking at it and shaking my head.  My sister-in-law came back in and saw what happened.  My niece piped up (You know, sometimes this child has such a loud voice!)  and said, “It’s not my fault.  It’s not my fault.  It’s Sissy’s.”  her momma’s reply was, “What a way to top off the trip!”  I agreed.  I found someone and told them that there’d been a little accident back there and they said they would clean it up.  They probably just wanted us out of there!  So we hit the road.

As we were leaving Nashville behind in the rearview mirror, I started laughing.  My sister-in-law looked at me and wanted me to share the joke.  I said, “You know, I bet that guy last night at the Crown Plaza wondered why we were dropping our friend off there and we were going to stay at “Shady Street USA!”  I thought he got a weird look on his face when I told him where we wanted to go.”  She didn’t even laugh.  She just sat there shaking her head.  That’s how it was all the way home.  I’d just start laughing and she would shake her head.

Ah….good times people!  Good times! Good times spent with precious family. That is a gift from God!

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