For the last two years, we've purchased a family subscription to the local performing arts center's children's series. There is one show a month, geared for three- to twelve-year-olds. Some of the shows are amazing, some are mediocre, but universally, they all start about thirty minutes late.

Now, I don't know what brain-trust booked all but one of these shows at 6:30 pm on a weeknight, but it's really hard to get there in time, and in a pleasant mood. I assume they put the big money shows on the 'good' nights. I really shouldn't complain at all. However...

The center offers an art project in the lobby for the kids, an hour before show time. On the weekends, this is great. On the weeknights, we arrive shortly before show time, and have to rush to make the craft. Because heaven forbid if we just don't make it. We dress them up in their finery, and then give them tissue paper and glitter and encourage them to smear glue all over it. Or make crayon shavings, or perhaps, for a truly fun activity, have them draw with chalk (and then wipe their hands all over their velvet skirt!) after which a cranky octogenarian sprays the hell out of their drawing with fixative and sends them away with instructions of "don't touch that or you'll ruin it!"

Our seats are in the balcony, so we run up the stairs and down the stairs and up the stairs and down the stairs and up the stairs and finally enter the seating area, where a cranky septuagenarian says "hey, you can't bring art in here!" Rather than question that particular wisdom, and ponder why they would encourage children to make and abandon art, I cram the art into my purse and stumble to our seats. Then begins the wait for the rest of the audience to get seated. It is, of course, hard to get small children into the theatre, because you have to insist that they use the bathroom, and then you have to wait in line with every other parent who is insisting on the same thing.

We know quite a few other families with the same subscription, and so we pass the time scanning the seating, and occasionally hollering out "Hiiiiii! Hiiiiiii! Hey, Susie! Hiiiiiii Susie!" while waving frantically. Lather, rinse, repeat, until the emcee, usually a local radio personality, trots out onto the stage and leads the audience in the ritual "thanking of the corporate sponsors."

Finally the show begins, and the kids spend the first five minutes clapping politely and sitting upright in their seats, eyes fixed on the stage. Depending on the offering of the evening, the kids either continue to watch politely, or begin squiming. We hold them in our laps, we make them pillows from our coats, we allow them to sit on the floor if only they stay quiet and don't harass the cranky guy with the stick up his *cough* who sits in the row in front of us.

All around the theatre, parents are doing this same seating cha-cha-cha. There is always the murmur of small voices asking a thousand questions. People come and go, come and go. Around us, parents sneak contraband -snacks and juiceboxes - from purses and coat pockets, hoping to get to the end of the hour program without anyone (loudly) dying of hunger.

Last night, it was my daughter, my mother and myself that attended. We left my son and the toddler home with my husband, and set off to have a merry old time. The ratio of adults to kids? Excellent. The child in question? Old enough to sit still. I had high hopes of a successful evening of culture.

The program was a bilingual concert of songs from Central and South America. Within moments of the opening notes, my daughter was enthralled. This time, the wiggling was coming from me and my mom. We found the audience participation portions, where we were supposed to make donkey ears on our heads, or scream "I yiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiyi!" hilarious.

When they started pulling people out of the audience to swing fake boleadoras around their heads, we were wiping away tears, and choking on our surpressed giggles. My daughter sat quietly between us, clapping along when requested, and paying attention, while my mom and I snorted over the parent volunteer who was so into the boleadoras routine that my mom exclaimed "Johnny there was born to swing balls around!"

We pulled ourselves together and watched the video of Señor Frog and his not-so-happy ending after hiding in a guitar, but then my mom started to get a hot flash, and off came the layers of sweaters. This got me giggling, because the kids commonly decide that they must remove all excess layers, and then must put them back on again whenever they are forced to sit in one place for more than five minutes. Aha! They got that from grandma!

Oy. By the end of the performance, my mom and I were exhausted and about to burst with comic observations of the performance. My daughter, however, managed to keep herself under control the whole time. We finished the evening at McDonalds and then returned home. I tucked my daughter into bed and then reinacted the boleadoras act for my husband using a ball of yarn and a lot of "i yiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiyi!" and foot stomping. He didn't find it as funny as I did, but I'm confident that if I keep working on it, maybe getting the kids to chant and stomp along, it will be a fine piece of performance art.

This morning, my daughter hummed one of the charming songs under her breath as she colored at the kitchen table. She came away from the show with a wonderful cultural experience. My mom and I came away with great material for the next family dinner. Worth the price of admission, if you ask me.