Ravinia Smack Down

Last week we went to the Ravinia Festival outside Chicago to see Patti LuPone. Ravinia is sort of a Lollapalooza for gays and snooty rich people, except that instead of getting high on pot and being mashed together with a bunch of sweaty people, the nice folks sit in lawn chairs and sip wine by candle light. It’s all quite civilized.

Most people get to Ravinia early so that they can find a decent spot on the lawn to spread out their chairs and picnic blankets, and maybe even get a glimpse of the stage. Mark and I went early and got to the park two hours before the performance, where we procured a nice location on a small rise about a mile from the ’good’ lawn seats. I didn’t consider it that bad a spot because we had easy access to the toilets, and with the help of binoculars we could see the tops of the heads of the very last row of pavilion patrons, but not the actual stage.

By the time the show started all the lawn space had been taken up, and as we sat there watching the backs of the hundreds of people between us and the actual show, two mothers with two young girls came straggling up looking for a place to camp out. I pulled our picnic blanket aside and offered them a few feet of room when one of the little girls whined, “Is this where you’re going to put us mommy?”  Mommy immediately took the girl’s hand and escorted her away, to discipline her and tell her about manners I surmised. I apparently surmised wrong. A few minutes later she came skipping back with an ice cream cone, and after a few words back and forth she blurted out, while glaring over at me as if I were some kind of alien monster, “What? We’re not moving from this horrible spot?” Once again mommy took her by the hand and led her away. Probably to buy her a puppy and a new car.

My dad, Big Al, would have never stood for that kind of behavior. His discipline was swift and harsh. A quick flash of hand was all you saw before you were seeing stars. I know most people don’t approve of physical punishment and do the nicey nice things, like time out and bribery with an ice cream cone, but Big Al’s swift justice worked on me. A time out for Big Al was the time between when you acted like a little asshole, and the time he got his belt out. In fact, I knew enough not to even open my mouth like that little girl did. Of course that situation wouldn’t ever have come up when we were kids, because my dad would never have taken us to such a snooty place to begin with.