Saturday, October 5, 2013

Monorails, Family Excursions, and Seattle

   When I first came to Washington, there was so much that I missed. I missed the heat of the South, I missed the beaches, and I even missed the way people talked. I love hearing a Southern accent; I feel homesick every time I do. However, Washington has become my home as well. There are many things about this area that I have come to love.
  One of the things that I love is going to concerts and ballets and shows in Seattle. I go with my mother and my daughter, and sometimes my sister and her two kids; it's a family thing. I also feel that for the kids, seeing things like a music concert or a play or ballet is something that is very important. I feel that this expands their creativity, but that's a post for another day.
   We go to these shows as a family, and last night, my mother, myself and my daughter went to the Josh Groban concert. We have been to see him three times, and we always enjoy the show. This time, I did not expect to get to go, because with the saving up for the recent Yellowstone trip, I had a tight budget. Unknown to me, my mother purchased my ticket as a birthday present (BEST PRESENT EVER!!!!) so I did get to go.
   My mom works in Seattle, so she is very familiar with the area, thus we rely on her for the navigation of Seattle's busy streets and many sidewalks. One thing that my mother is very firm on is that in Seattle, you drive as little as possible. So we park at a certain garage and we hoof it over to the monorail.
   My mom and daughter and sister and niece and nephew all love the monorail; the monorail scares the shit out of me. Heights, we've talked about how I don't like heights, and the monorail runs on a single track, high, high above the city. Not only this, but the monorail car tilts as it goes along it's demented, merry-ass way. To this side, to that side, and I am doing my best to lean the opposite way that the monorail is tilting. Ya'know, to balance things out. As was the case last night, when my mom and daughter were watching me with knowing smirks on their amused faces. As the monorail slowed, my daughter says in a mock-soothing voice, "Don't worry mom, it's stowing down because we are almost there."
The stage for the Nutcracker ballet. 
   You see, one time, on the way to a performance of the Nutcracker, I really freaked out. The Nutcracker is a ballet that we have been going to see every year, performed by the Pacific Northwest ballet. We LOVE that ballet, but I don't love the monorail. And that day, the monorail was jumping and banging more than usual. I mean, I usually don't hear the thing rattle so much. I guess because usually, the monorail is pretty full, as a major form of transportation in downtown Seattle, but on this day, we had a pretty empty car. So I heard all the little bangs and rattles all the better. And then we slowed to almost a stop, crawling along, slow as a snail.
   After listening to all those bangs, bams, and rattles, I was positive that somehow we have broken down in the middle of the friggin' air. I was freaked, I mean, how were we going to get down??!! And I asked, "Why are we stopping?!" in a panicked manner to my mom. Which of course meant that I was louder than I thought, so the few people that were on the monorail were looking over at me with amusement in their eyes.
   "We're slowing down because we are fixing to stop," my mom says to me, and she's really trying not to laugh. Credit to her, because I probably would have laughed. Which is why my daughter cracked her little quip last night on the way to the Josh Groban concert; my fear of the monorail is a joke between her and my mother, and they love to remind me about the night that I panicked because we were stopping.
   Not that I mind, and I laugh along with them, because as calm and collected as I try to be, there are times when all that just goes out the window, and when that happens -- it's pretty damn funny. Gotta see the humor in things. And the rewards for using the monorail are extensive, we use that to go the space needle, the Seattle Science Center, the ballet, concerts, and so-on. What's a little irrational fear compared to those rewards?

No comments:

Post a Comment