Not our usual Saturday night.
This evening was one of those times where I had to stop and wonder what on earth we all did for the hundreds of years before there were cell phones. Because sweet caroline, we're suuuuuuuuure reliant on them now.
My cell phone battery clunked out again this morning (I think I've overcharged it several hundred too many times) and so I nonchalantly left it home to charge its little self while I went and did a Funny Girl double-header.
In between shows, a few of us pit members went out to Green Mill to eat. Good times, as always. But when I got back to the theater, I was immediately bombarded by every person I saw who knew me, asking if "they" had found me. Er--apparently not... After some deeper inquiry, it turned out that it had been Wendi & Brent, the stage managers, who had been looking for me for the past hour or so. I couldn't find either of them, but I guessed that Allen had called them trying to find me, since he knows them, and since he also knew I didn't have my phone. I also figured that since they didn't call Green Mill and have me paged after they were told that was where I was, that it couldn't have been an emergency. My guess was Allen probably hadn't fed the pets and taken the dog outside before he left, and had wanted to let me know so I could go home and take care of it between shows, but it was too late for that now, so oh well, Bayer could just cross his little doggy legs and hold it.
But then I finally found someone who knew the whole story, and she immediately, after one look at my face, gave me her cell phone so I could call Allen. I was half right: Allen did call Wendi & Brent looking for me, but it was because he had been at the theater laundering and ironing costumes for his show when he suddenly became extremely, overwhelmingly dizzy, complete with chills and sweats and shaking. Shortly after that he threw up, and two hours later (during which I had of course been incommunicado) he was still feeling so dizzy he couldn't move. He's not one to get worked up over nothing, and I'd never heard him so adamant as he was about needing me to come and get him.
So after working out all the little details with the music director and the other violins who were going to have to cover my Violin I part, I took off like a bat for downtown St. Paul--and ran smack into Prom Land. There was no street parking ANYWHERE (though there were plenty of brightly-colored teenagers teetering across streets in unlikely and frustrating places), and naturally I had no phone with which to let Allen know I was there so he could come down. I finally wound up having to use one of the parking ramps, and once Allen was fetched (with off-stage actors and the house manager flitting nervously around him) and sitting outside, I went back to get my car and found myself in a brief altercation with the ramp attendants, because they had only very poorly posted the fact that they accept cash and ONLY cash. Do I ever have cash? Ha! They made me reverse my car away from the payment booth, park again, and run into the Lawson building to get cash from the ATM. And the attendant's comment as I was finally leaving? "You weren't here very long!" Actually, sir, what does it say on the ticket, ten minutes? That's ten minutes longer than I wanted to be here, thanks very much.
Poor Allen was sitting outside the theater, shaking and chilled, when I finally pulled around, though the dizziness seemed to be coming in waves, because every now and again he would seem perfectly fine. At the nearest Health Partners urgent care, we got checked in and sat down in the waiting room to join (among others): half a dozen lethargic and/or crying infants and their mothers in varying states of worry, a mom and her son who had managed to beat the rush and were now just waiting for throat culture results, a feverish-looking boy completely enveloped in a blanket on his father's lap, and a girl holding a large ice pack to her swollen mouth while her truly peachy parents hollered things to each other across the waiting room ("Here! Don't you want your insurance card back?! You'll need it when you go for your colonoscopy!" "Geez! You gotta tell the whole world?!"). But the saddest, by far, was a boy of maybe age 9 or 10 with a horrifyingly swollen and misshapen foot, who was carried into the clinic by his (apparently very strong) mother and who then sat in a wheelchair in the seats behind ours, calmly discussing his fate with her.
"Ok, worst case scenario--you know what that means?"
"No."
"It means, worst that could have happened to your foot is...what?"
"Broken."
"Right. And that would probably mean...?"
"A cast."
"Right. And it might also mean...?"
"Crutches."
"Right, right. But what else?"
(Pause.)
"No playing soccer."
"That's right. So."
(Glum silence.)
Anyway, I read an article in The Rake in which people got maimed and killed by their pet tigers, Allen watched the room spin merrily around, and the waiting room finally started clearing out. When at least we got in to see him, the endearingly quirky doctor decided that Allen probably just has some kind of viral inner ear infection. Gave him some over-the-counter motion sickness medication which knocked Allen out right away once we got home, and hopefully tomorrow he'll be feeling something more like normal. Scary for a little while there, though.
My cell phone battery clunked out again this morning (I think I've overcharged it several hundred too many times) and so I nonchalantly left it home to charge its little self while I went and did a Funny Girl double-header.
In between shows, a few of us pit members went out to Green Mill to eat. Good times, as always. But when I got back to the theater, I was immediately bombarded by every person I saw who knew me, asking if "they" had found me. Er--apparently not... After some deeper inquiry, it turned out that it had been Wendi & Brent, the stage managers, who had been looking for me for the past hour or so. I couldn't find either of them, but I guessed that Allen had called them trying to find me, since he knows them, and since he also knew I didn't have my phone. I also figured that since they didn't call Green Mill and have me paged after they were told that was where I was, that it couldn't have been an emergency. My guess was Allen probably hadn't fed the pets and taken the dog outside before he left, and had wanted to let me know so I could go home and take care of it between shows, but it was too late for that now, so oh well, Bayer could just cross his little doggy legs and hold it.
But then I finally found someone who knew the whole story, and she immediately, after one look at my face, gave me her cell phone so I could call Allen. I was half right: Allen did call Wendi & Brent looking for me, but it was because he had been at the theater laundering and ironing costumes for his show when he suddenly became extremely, overwhelmingly dizzy, complete with chills and sweats and shaking. Shortly after that he threw up, and two hours later (during which I had of course been incommunicado) he was still feeling so dizzy he couldn't move. He's not one to get worked up over nothing, and I'd never heard him so adamant as he was about needing me to come and get him.
So after working out all the little details with the music director and the other violins who were going to have to cover my Violin I part, I took off like a bat for downtown St. Paul--and ran smack into Prom Land. There was no street parking ANYWHERE (though there were plenty of brightly-colored teenagers teetering across streets in unlikely and frustrating places), and naturally I had no phone with which to let Allen know I was there so he could come down. I finally wound up having to use one of the parking ramps, and once Allen was fetched (with off-stage actors and the house manager flitting nervously around him) and sitting outside, I went back to get my car and found myself in a brief altercation with the ramp attendants, because they had only very poorly posted the fact that they accept cash and ONLY cash. Do I ever have cash? Ha! They made me reverse my car away from the payment booth, park again, and run into the Lawson building to get cash from the ATM. And the attendant's comment as I was finally leaving? "You weren't here very long!" Actually, sir, what does it say on the ticket, ten minutes? That's ten minutes longer than I wanted to be here, thanks very much.
Poor Allen was sitting outside the theater, shaking and chilled, when I finally pulled around, though the dizziness seemed to be coming in waves, because every now and again he would seem perfectly fine. At the nearest Health Partners urgent care, we got checked in and sat down in the waiting room to join (among others): half a dozen lethargic and/or crying infants and their mothers in varying states of worry, a mom and her son who had managed to beat the rush and were now just waiting for throat culture results, a feverish-looking boy completely enveloped in a blanket on his father's lap, and a girl holding a large ice pack to her swollen mouth while her truly peachy parents hollered things to each other across the waiting room ("Here! Don't you want your insurance card back?! You'll need it when you go for your colonoscopy!" "Geez! You gotta tell the whole world?!"). But the saddest, by far, was a boy of maybe age 9 or 10 with a horrifyingly swollen and misshapen foot, who was carried into the clinic by his (apparently very strong) mother and who then sat in a wheelchair in the seats behind ours, calmly discussing his fate with her.
"Ok, worst case scenario--you know what that means?"
"No."
"It means, worst that could have happened to your foot is...what?"
"Broken."
"Right. And that would probably mean...?"
"A cast."
"Right. And it might also mean...?"
"Crutches."
"Right, right. But what else?"
(Pause.)
"No playing soccer."
"That's right. So."
(Glum silence.)
Anyway, I read an article in The Rake in which people got maimed and killed by their pet tigers, Allen watched the room spin merrily around, and the waiting room finally started clearing out. When at least we got in to see him, the endearingly quirky doctor decided that Allen probably just has some kind of viral inner ear infection. Gave him some over-the-counter motion sickness medication which knocked Allen out right away once we got home, and hopefully tomorrow he'll be feeling something more like normal. Scary for a little while there, though.