Dearest Rachel –
Coming home from class at church last night (Pastor Joel is doing a series on Old Testament characters, and certain Biblical counseling principles that apply to them; our first night started almost at the very beginning, with Cain and God’s warning to him to keep his desires under control, lest something terrible happen. Needless to say, the advice went unheeded), Logan was sitting in the family room, looking somewhere between cross and disappointed. “You didn’t tell me that you would be gone all night,” he complained.
Which is quite true, I suppose, but I’m not sure why he would necessarily be concerned about our absence. I don’t see myself as answerable to him, as to where we might go of a given evening, and in any event, we were out of the house more than an hour before his workday was to end. Were we supposed to let him know, and interrupt him doing his job?
Then again, it’s not my presence that he was likely complaining about. For all that YouTube generally offers ‘on-demand’ viewing (which was one more reason for us to turn to it one Daniel introduced us to the medium a decade or so ago; and to think, now we get irritated by a couple of short, skippable commercials, as opposed to the two or three straight minutes that broadcast several times during every half-hour program), there are a few things that are streamed live, and it would seem that the boys – at Logan’s insistence – watch a certain channel’s streams that generally take place on Wednesday evenings. With Daniel being out of the house, he could watch it live, but what would be the point? The fun apparently goes out of it when he can’t share it with his friend; and I can certainly relate to that, even if I never explicitly say so to his face.
But that’s how life goes; we disappoint even other over one thing or another. At least at some point, they should be able to watch the stream at a later time, when the (likely edited) version is uploaded to the channel.
Meanwhile, I could tell you a story about the opposite side of the coin; while Daniel and I (but mostly Daniel) may have disappointed Logan by leaving the house, I had a situation involving a preference to stay in. The other day, I got one of the many emails I receive from this travel club I’ve signed up with, offering me tickets to a show downtown in the city – because the city is a travel destination in its own right, even if it’s barely twenty miles away as the crow flies.
The show is what caught my attention; The Rocky Horror Picture Show, attended by Barry Bostwick (Brad – I won’t repeat what the audience calls him, but the dude is willing to show up), ‘Little’ Nell Campbell (Columbia – “first one to scream gets it…”) and Patricia Quinn (“What’s your favorite color?” Magenta). I’m kind of assuming it’s in partial tribute (“to absent friends”) to Tim Curry, who I’ve no idea if you’ve seen him over there, but just so you’re aware…
And when I saw the offer, while I wasn’t too keen to check it out on my own, I thought it looked interesting – and you must know by now that I find myself doing unusual stuff now and again strictly for the purpose of writing home about it. But here’s the thing, and you would know this better than anyone else; we weren’t the ones in our circle who were the big fans of the movie and its cult. We had to be introduced to the whole thing by someone else.
So I forwarded the offer to that someone else; if nothing else, I thought she might jump at the chance to see several of the original cast in person while people still could. I still kick myself from time to time about not going to see Graham Chapman when he appeared a mile north from our campus at ISU, despite not knowing at the time which of the members of the Flying Circus he was. I thought that, between the two of us, we could conjure up enough interest to go to the Chicago Theater to see this thing.
But let’s face it; a trip downtown is a daunting prospect, especially at our age, so she decided it wasn’t really worth pursuing. And while I wasn’t really surprised by the response – particularly given the limited lead time and the logistics – what surprised me was this momentary flash of disappointment that it wouldn’t happen that crossed my mind. It was a whim to propose – and I still wouldn’t do it on my own – so it shouldn’t have bothered me to hear a “no,” and yet in that moment, it did.
It’s how things go, honey; we disappoint people, and people disappoint us in turn, often for unexpected and trivial reasons. That won’t change until (and I guess unless, for some of us) we get to where you are. But until then, we have to live with it, eh?
