Chapter Eight.

I was warned: get to the school Christmas play early and grab a front seat.

Now to me, someone suffering from the kind of warped time sensitivity that only prolonged sleep deprivation can offer, getting to the play ten minutes before it would start seemed early enough. But to the parents who had occupied every single seat in the first few front rows, obviously long before I arrived, ten minutes beforehand was tantamount to “you may as well have come ten hours late because now you won’t get a seat where your child can see you from the stage and you obviously don’t love your child or you would have gotten here earlier.” This is the first play my daughter has been in (she is only four after all), so let’s chalk up my tardiness to inexperience.

What are the repercussions of not getting that front row seat? Well…if your child can not see you from the stage, he or she may not know you are in the audience. In fact, it is almost certain that he or she will believe you are not there. This is bad, you see, because then your child may do things like pick his or her nose and eat the product, right there in front of everyone. Again and again. Or, if the child sees you there, he or she may be less likely to ad lib his or her lines. I’m convinced my daughter did this. I did not check with her teachers afterward, but I doubt her lines truly were: “I have stage fright,” or “is my mommy here?” or “ Mommy are you there?” These last two really gutted me, because I was always sure my daughter would cry out for me and not for her mommy…excuse me…her mummy…if she were frightened. I guess there is a little vanity in every man.

And so, this was the beginning of our Christmas, our first in England.

Merry Christmas, Cornwall!