Sometimes life doesn't turn out the way you expect. We're supposed to be in Canada. Last weekend we should have boarded the Rocky Mountaineer for a journey through the Canadian Rockies. Those plans were made before I ever heard of a coronavirus. But with the border still closed to non-essential travel, and with the Rocky Mountaineer's season postponed until at least August, this bucket-list item will have to wait. So I've been consoling myself by remembering the last trip to Canada, which also didn't turn out quite the way I expected.
Our last trip north was early in March to enjoy a musical called "The Marvelous Wonderettes" at the Chemainus Theater. The play begins at Springfield High School's 1958 senior prom and ends at the reunion ten years later, and the entertainment for both events is the school's four-girl songleader squad, The Marvelous Wonderettes. The play is really an excuse to enjoy some of the popular music of the 50s and 60s, a simpler time when popular music was actually both musical and singable. (Before you ask, yes, I can hear my millennial friends moaning about my musical bigotry, and no, I don't care.) What I didn't know was that I was destined to become part of the cast and end up on stage dancing with Missy.Missy, it turned out, had a crush on Mr. Lee, and Mr. Lee turned out to be me, a fact I discovered the hard way when the spotlight suddenly focused on my seat in the audience. There would be no escape. On my left was my wife, who clearly was not going to assume the role of Mr. Lee. On my right was an empty aisle. On stage were four young ladies all pointing directly at me, and all around me were about 300 other theater patrons thankful that the spotlight hadn't picked on them. I guess someone must have noticed that I still look like a faculty member.
I have never been much of a dancer. My brain may get the rhythm, but there is a disconnect between my brain and my feet. In my junior high school days the well-meaning faculty tried to teach us the fundamentals of dancing on an occasional co-ed PE day. I'm pretty sure that the only people who actually enjoyed those sessions were the PE teachers who must have found them mildly amusing; students of both genders endured them as a necessary embarrassment. Suffice it to say that I am no more agile in my mid-70s than I was in junior high. But for better or worse, in the second act (that previously noted ten-year reunion) Missy announced that we were engaged, and of course I had to be part of the celebration. I've actually gotten engaged twice in my life, and neither event was anything like this one. That's me up on stage dancing with Missy. Well, sort of dancing...It was quite a celebration for a matinee performance. Chemainus is a very small town, and we stopped after the play for dinner at a local restaurant where I was treated like a star and greeted by everyone as Mr. Lee. It was supposed to be a quiet getaway, but sometimes life doesn't turn out the way you expect.
Sadly, the Chemainus Theater Festival has had to cancel the rest of the 2020 season because of the current Covid-19 pandemic. It wasn't exactly what they expected either. But they will be back, and so will we. Meanwhile, one small part of my brain is wondering what surprises might have awaited us this month if the border was open and the train was running. Because sometimes life doesn't turn out the way you expect.
