WHO KNEW 'MAX & RUBY' WAS ALL CAMPY AND GAY AND FABULOUS?

Oh, wait, was that just me?

Well, it totally rocked, just the same!!

From the moment the first of 6 children lined up behind me to baby-duck-it to the parking lot to pile into my truck, I knew I hadn't stocked up on nearly enough caffeine that morning.

But the inventors of the in-vehicle DVD player are just angels sent down from heaven, I tell you. And I don't feel that way about much -- outside of my iPhone, FLIP, and MacBookPro.

So, we made it to theatre, sanity intact, and managed to find a parking space about as far away from the entrance as humanly possible. And somewhere between, "Hold hands and stay together!" and "Anyone have to go potty?" I began to slowly realize that our two little first-grade classes were clearly not the only ones there.

And as the dramatic music began to swell in my head and the lights began to blur and swirl, I turned in slow-motion as we entered the theatre and scanned the sea of tiny little human beings pouring into their seats and flooding the rows, crashing and thrashing against the shore of parent volunteers relegated to the end seats in what could only be described as feeble efforts at containment. The waves of children rose and fell. The thunderous sound of chatter and springy seats was deafening.

And then everything went dark.

Thankfully, it was just the lights.

And who knew that's all it would take to silence an entire auditorium full of 1000 squirmy wormy children? Well, that, and 20 nazi-ushers, who, in addition to obviously not being big fans of children's theatre, are also, evidently, not big fans of parents.

They were even worse than the ushers at Wicked who were all very ready, willing and able to climb right over the seats and yank that cellphone from your illegal-picture-takin'-facebook-updatin' little hands. These guys were condescending beyond belief, using very harsh finger-pointing gestures (no, not THAT finger) to ensure that "you adults" all slouched down appropriately to accommodate the overwhelmingly under-4-foot viewing audience. Could slouching for an hour-and-a-half cause scoliosis, I asked my amazonish volunteer co-parent, who clearly couldn't respond with her chin in her knees.

But the show was surprisingly cute. The costumes were great. And the music was, at least tolerable. Although, it was the cross-dressing purple bunny scout that I think I'll miss most of all.

Then somewhere around minute 75, the buzzing began to ramp up again and the antsy little whac-a-moles started bobbing up and down in their seats.

Luckily, the show came to an end right on time and just before the stretchy headbands and smuggled plastic animals began flying across the room.

The downpour outside was no match for the level of excitement (read: missed morning snack) of the kiddos on the way back to school. But as far as field trips go, this one definitely gets a 3 out of 5 toothless grins from me. Live performances pretty much just rule!!

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