Your Humble Servant, Ma'am

Well, I ushered for the Dallas Theater Center production of Arsenic and Old Lace on Sunday. Somehow, I double-booked myself a second shift on Friday, so I’ll wait until next week to tell ya about it. Sunday was a little rough, and my guess would be because of lack of run-through time because of all the damn snow last week. We’ll see if the engine is idling more smoothly tomorrow. Just to be fair. I can report in advance that the sets and costumes are quite incroyable right from jump street. But more on that later.

Anyway, the thing that had me giggling on Sunday was this one patron who ran up the aisle at me just as the lights started to dim, holding her blackberry like it was a live hand grenade. I do my humble servant bit and ask if I can help. She tells me, with a look that only be called aghast, that her phone battery died before she could officially shut it off. She asks me if a call can still come in its current semi-defunct state. I’m about to say “Oh, you’re probably safe” when I realize the terrified look on her face is because she’s afraid of her phone going off in the middle of some big moment, and the theme from Sex & The City interrupting Betty Buckley (yeah, the Betty Buckley, recognize, bitches) who swoops down into the audience and goes all Patti Lupone on her ass. I’m sure the prospect of getting an Anderson Cooper Cairo Beatdown in the middle of the Kalita Humpries Theater by a genuine Broadway diva was enough to scare the poop out of the poor woman, and “probably safe” wasn’t gonna cut it. I bravely threw myself on the grenade and sat in the back of the theater with the cell covered with a handy blanket (I didn’t want to have Ms. Buckley lupone me either, better safe). Anywhoodle. I was able to assure her after the final bows that her little one had been quiet as a mouse, and no problem at all to babysit. We, the few, the proud, the valorous volunteers in vests.