Silflay Hraka

A reprint of a post from three years ago, in honor of the Man in Yellow, who–weirdly enough–also played a part in the very first post here at Hraka.

Men At Work

I’ve been going to concerts all my life. No matter what I’ve done, I’ve never been able to get front row seats. I waited for ten hours in the snow fifteen years ago to see Jimmy Buffett at the Dean Dome. I was 14 rows back. The closest I’ve ever been was an R.E.M show at Duke when they played Cameron Indoor Stadium. I don’t want to even think about how long ago that was. 5th row center, with a girlfriend, Phyllis, and a friend of hers whose name escapes me. Likely it escaped me then as well. Nice location, but still not the front. INXS at the Dome? 20 rows back. Violent Femmes and the Indigo Girls at Memorial Auditorium? 12 rows back.

Until Thursday, when I finally scored front row concert tickets, the always sought after and never realized acme of any concert going experience. Right in front, where the band can’t miss you. Down where you can count nose hairs. Just me, my wife and our toddler, going to see the Wiggles.

As far as Ngnat was concerned, we got our $75 worth just walking into the venue. She looked at all the kids and was overcome with delight. She walked in on red carpet and ran around for the sheer pleasure of movement, and bounced her seat up and down in manic bliss. She made peepee sitting on a men’s room public toilet amidst rapturous paroxysms of happiness. My, whatever we were doing was fun! There were even songs she knew playing in the background!

She sat in her Mommy’s lap and watched the curtain open. Then THEY walked out onto stage. Jeff. Murray. Greg. Anthony. It was as if a bus had fallen out of the sky onto her. She knows the Wiggles. We watch Wiggles videos all the time. We told her we were going to go see the Wiggles, but obviously she didn’t realize we were going to SEE THE WIGGLES.

The paradigm shift took about 4 minutes, during which she sat completely still on the sainted wife’s lap. She sucked on her thumb, then her thumb and a finger, then a thumb and two fingers, until eventually she was attempting to cram her entire fist down her throat. Finally, when Henry the Octopus walked onstage, she finished processing all the relevant data. She let out a scream that a Sinatra bobby-soxer or Beatlemaniac would have recognized instantly.

“HEEEEEEENNNNNNNWWWWWYYYYYYYY!!!” It was almost as if she wasn’t convinced that everything was real until she saw a gigantic purple mollusk stroll out and give her a wave. After that it was “Well, if Henry’s here, it must be ok.”

Then “Waaaaaaaags!”and “Dowafeeeeeeeee!”. She wasn’t the only one screaming either. The crowd noise had been growing with each introduction. It reached its apex when the Captain ran out. Ran out, rounded off a roundoff , shook his feather sword, and said “Ahoy there, me hearties!”.

Every kid in the building went apeshit, and it was a big building. And then the Wiggles sang.

I can’t tell you the songs. They’re all two minutes long and involve various acts of wackiness on the part of the Wiggles and their animal and pirate friends. The kids know all the words, and most of the parents know most of the words, including me. It’s not hard, remembering to sing “Hot Potato” five times in a row. They did all their hits, which you’ve never heard of unless you’re the parent of a toddler. If you are the parent of a toddler, then they did “Hoop-te-Doo” and “Wiggly Party” and “Emu Dance” and “Move like an Emu” and “Watch Out, The Emu Can Disembowel You With One Swift Kick” and “Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack Cock-a-Doodle-Doo!”, during which the Wiggles call out the names of various celebrities and the Captain sings as if he were that person. His Mick Jagger and Madonna versions were good, but his Eminem was absolute genius. And while I was joking about the Emu disemboweling you song, I’m not about the Eminem version of “Quack Quack…..”. It was one of the most surreal things I’ve ever seen. Every Wiggle up on stage obviously thought it was a grand joke, challenging the Captain to rap his signature song on short notice. Surely it was planned, but it didn’t feel like it.

So the Captain rapped, and he and the Wiggles sang more songs, and Ngnat danced in the aisle with the other toddlers, turning around and around in a jerky, skipping galumph of a dance. I watched her while the sainted wife waited in the merchandise line for 30 minutes, hoping against hope that they wouldn’t sell out of T-shirts before she got to the head of the line. It was the venue’s fault, sticking all of the various Wiggly items into one place. The booth, such as it was, was staffed by two elderly ladies who stared in absolute shock at the 15 person deep sea of parents surrounding them on all sides, intent on getting a damn feathersword for little Johnny come hell or high water.

They did sell out, but only after she bought a blue shirt for Ngnat featuring four cartoon Wiggle faces. She insisted we put it on immediately, while she danced. Mom pulled the T-shirt over her head while I unbuttoned the original outfit, then pulled it off via a convenient arm hole. Must preserve an aura of modesty, you know.

She went to bed in it that night. She got up and went to daycare in it this morning. She’s sleeping in it now. We have tried to take it off, in case you’re looking for the Social Services number, but she refuses to have anything to do with that.

“My Wiggles!” she yells. “My Wiggles!”

I know it will damage my hip credentials beyond all repair, as if a white guy in his thirties still had hip credentials, but I had a blast. The Wiggles had the crowd in the palms of their hands. It was really cool to look out over the sea of people and see hundreds of pre-schoolers bouncing up and down as one, doing a primitive version of the hand jive to “Hot Potato.” Yes, it’s probably easy to do when three-quarters of your fans are under five, but how many of you have done that to a crowd? How many of you have ever gotten…say ten…ten kids to do something at once? I was a camp counselor for years. It’s a lot harder than it looks, and these guys did it effortlessly. The concert didn’t have anything like the tightly scripted feel I thought it would have. Rather it was relaxed, casual. They laughed at everything. Jeff rode out on a tiny little tricycle, and the handlebars came off, and he couldn’t get them back on. And he laughed, and they laughed, and Jeff struggled to get the recalcitrant toy off stage, and laughed some more. I bet Madonna would bite off bat heads if her tiny tricycle broke.

I’d seen a crowd like that only twice before in my life. Once was at a Buffett concert, when I saw twenty-thousand people moving as one to “Fins“. The other time was hearing two thousand scream out the chorus to “Add It Up” as if they were exorcising demons. And I wasn’t even high this time.

The wife also had a blast, for perhaps different reasons. The only downside to the whole evening for her was having to wait in line so long. She wanted to see more of Anthony, who she hadn’t thought much of until she saw him in person, at which point she discovered within herself a rather seamy lust.

Her exact words–”Damn, Anthony is hot!”

I bet you don’t hear that at many Barney concerts.

Update: Ngnat has now worn her Wiggles shirt for a second straight day and is sleeping in it for a third straight night. We managed to get her to take a bath today only by promising her that she could immediately put her shirt back on after the bath.

And, one thing that I left out. Anthony had an American flag guitar strap. I thought it a nice touch. Of course, it might not mean anything, but it’s hard not to see it as a gesture of support.

Much Later Update: Scotty M is now the proud owner of the Blue Wiggles t-shirt, Ngnat having outgrown it long ago. The images are faded and cracked, but it still gets worn to bed at least once a week in the warmer part of the year.

Continue reading ‘Wiggle No More’ »

Dinner last night was spaghetti with homemade sauce, since there was no Prego at hand in the pantry, and Texas Toast. Ngnat, as is her wont when faced with even the slightest of culinary experiments, found something to complain about–in this case the lack of a spoon with which to eat said dish. After demonstrating the absolute uselessness of a fork when it comes to consuming spaghetti by stabbing at the noodles a couple of times, she breathed out the weary sigh of a epicure denied, then rested her head in her hands, gazing listlessly at the pedestrian nutriment set before her.

“Elbows off the table, dear.” I told her. Her mother echoes me from across the table. “Yes, you aren’t supposed to eat like that.”

With yet another sigh, she turned to me with palms upraised, and in the most reasonable of tones, tried out the newest of the schoolyard epigrams she’s recently been exposed to.

“Daddy, how many times do I have to tell you? You’re not the boss of me.”

Across the table, Sainted Wife chokes on her milk. Inwardly, I’m chortling. Outwardly, I’m all Daddy voice.

“Go to your room. Get in your bed. You’re done for the night.” Challenge my authority, will you?

Ngnat’s face turns red, crumples, and tears begin to leak as she gets up and heads for the stairs. I twist the knife.

“I guess I am the boss of you, huh?”

I’ll pay for it one day, I suppose. One less trip she’ll feel obliged to make to the nursing home. Right now, though, Ngnat is far more concerned with the fact that her homework isn’t done. Between wails she relates this information to the world around her.

“I-hi ha-haf to-oo do-oo my-hi homewohk!”

“You should have thought of that before you started mouthing off at the table, Little Miss,” her mother informs her, and the wails retreat upstairs and fade, somewhat.

We consider the matter at hand, wife and I, while Scotty M from his seat informs us somewhat nervously that he is a very good boy. It’s three hours before bedtime, which means that we have over-punished, and need to back down–without, of course, appearing to have backed down. Fortunately there is an existing example for us to follow; English Common Law and The Royal Prerogative of Mercy. Robert Hughes, in The Fatal Shore, describes it thusly;

“This drama of immutable rules lay at the heart of the tremendous power that Law held over the English imagination. The judge simply surrendered to the imperative of the statutes, a course of action that absolved him of judicial murder, and that caused him to weep. His tears humbled him not before the men in the dock, which would have been unthinkable, but before the idea of Law itself. When the Royal Mercy intervened as it commonly did, transmuting the death penalty into exile on the other side of the world, the accused and their relatives could bless the intervening power of patronage while leaving the superior operations of Law unquestioned. The law was a disembodied entity, beyond class interest; the god was in the codex.”

That’s pretty much an accurate description of our parenting philosophy, minus the hanging and judgely tears. Over sentence as if we had no choice in the matter, then intervene at a later time to commute or reduce the punishment. In this case, this was about a half hour later, after the table was cleared and the kitchen cleaned. That’s the nice thing about the exercise of the Royal Prerogative. Once one knows that it is to be exercised at some point, you can schedule it for the most convenient time, or, if there’s something interesting on TV and you really don’t want to be disturbed, after that.

Ngnat was encased in her comforter, red-faced and damp, when I entered her room. “Do you know what you did wrong?” I asked her. She nodded, too overcome to speak, hiccupping her grief every few seconds.

“Okay, then. I’ll talk to Mommy about maybe letting you to do your homework, but only if you concentrate on it and do a really god job. ”

“Thank you, Daddy,” she squeaked, and then burst into fresh tears. I sat and took her in my lap. The sobs slowly wound down.

“It’s okay, honey. You won’t do it again.”

“No, daddy.”

Mission accomplished.