We would be the Best Parents Ever.
We sprung for VIP tickets, giving us up-front seating and backstage passes. The backstage part may or may not be appreciated (other than Disney, costumed characters are best loved from a distance) but we knew he'd want to be close the stage so that he could see the action. The VIP seats were going to make us Better Than The Best Parents Ever. We were going to be set for life, even covering things like accidentally leaving a kid at Walmart overnight. We were so excited to see his excitement. It would be incredible.
We got into the venue and Micah saw the table of Veggie Tales wares for sale. His excitement was akin to what we were expecting, and he didn't even know about the concert yet. Oooh, how fun! But son, we'll come back here later - let's go sit down for a bit. And that was exciting, too, because there were TV's playing Veggie Tales videos right up there on stage! I walked right down front to the VIP section and rummaged around in my purse for the tickets to prove that we had the right to be there. As I was ushered past the ropes, I turned around to guide Micah through. Except he wasn't there. Sam was halfway back the auditorium, trying to coax Micah down front. Micah's hands were stuck to his ears and he had a "I'm not coming any further!" look on his face. And he didn't, either. Sam carried him to our seats, where he nervously tried escaping time and again. The only time he took his hands off his ears was to make the sign for 'potty.' It's his thing when he's nervous or afraid.
Why do we sometimes forget that Micah is different? We chose not to take him to a basketball game until we knew his sensitivities wouldn't be completely overwhelmed. And yet, it never once occurred to us that a concert, with the bright lights and loud music, would be too much for him to handle. Because it was. The poor boy really did have to go to the bathroom, and spent quite a while there before I could coax him out of his quiet place. I ended up carrying his kicking, crying 80 pound mass into the auditorium to tell Sam that we were in the back.
I restrained Micah on my lap in the very last row, and he sat with his hands on his ears, trying to escape. Except when songs started playing, he stopped trying to escape and started jumping up and down on my leg, hands still over his ears. I felt that concert the next day, trust me.
Eventually, Micah realized that he knew all the songs, and he knew the storyline, and that it wasn't really scary at all. He got into his zone and sat in another row, not allowing us to sit with him so that he could get his groove on while dancing with the music. (Thank goodness there was space waaaaaaay in the back to spread out.) By the end of the concert, he was right up at the stage playing in the bubbles. While the VIP seats were unused, Micah did eventually love the concert. And while it wasn't anything like we expected it would be, we loved watching Micah enjoy himself. So really, the night was very much like the life we have with the boy. It's nothing like we thought it would be, but full of wonder and fun in ways we never expected.
2 comments:
This whole post made me smile! Don't you love it when your hero-ness crashes into reality?
So glad he got to enjoy it in the end. :)
That happens to all of us - the things that we think will be the biggest hots fizzle, and the things we don't think twice about are the biggest hits. It's like the gift vs. box phenomenon.
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