Which Way to Duloc?

Micah has been into Shrek lately. He discovered You Tube for things like video watching, and gets all the weird things, like a play of the movie Frozen, in Italian, and Shrek the Musical starring 3rd rate actors that seem to be mocking the play rather than playing in it. While Frozen was trending in the house long enough for us to almost be fluent in Italian, we're not subject to bad acting at a loud volume. We can quote the entire script by heart. Every single one of us.

Shrek is so huge for Micah, that he "plays" it every day. He sets up a Shrek village with anything he can find around the house. The living room floor is littered with boxes and containers. This one is the swamp, that one is the castle. I have no idea what they all are, but he does, and he takes photos of them to look at after we make him put them all away. This is Every.Single.Day. Shrek is what he lives for nowadays.

One of the local high schools puts on some of the best plays each year, and this year was Shrek, the Musical. Of course we had to get tickets for Micah. He saw signs advertising it in his school, and comes home every day talking about nothing else.

"How was school today?" SHREK!
"Did you have gym today?" SHREK!
"I heard your aide was out today. I'm sorry." SHREK!

Yesterday was the day of the play. He came home from school nearly in tears, because he learned that it wasn't church day. (Because it wasn't.) He wouldn't be pacified that it was Shrek day, and insisted that he was not going to watch it.

Well this was a fun dilemma.

I bribed him out of the house with hot dogs at Sheetz, and then he insisted on bringing them home rather than eating them at the store, so dinner was a fail, too. We drove to grandma's house to pick her up for the adventure, and on the way we passed a billboard advertising the musical. Sir Grumpy Pants got slightly excited about that, but didn't want to show it because he was still angry over life in general. He did stop actively whining, though, so that was a plus.

At the school, we picked up our reserved tickets, were escorted to our seats, and waited for the show to begin. I prayed that Micah wouldn't run out with his hands over his ears in an autistic fit. (Part of Down syndrome involves autistic tendencies. This is part of the reason these kids don't do well with schedule changes. Micah has a thing about loud concerts or fireworks.)

When the curtain went up, and ogres walked out on stage, Micah's gasp could be heard all over the small auditorium. He began clapping and whispering loudly that SHREK, SHREK, SHREK was on the stage! The rest of the evening was pretty much spent watching the play through Micah's eyes. To him, it was a little piece of Disney heaven right here in the county. At intermission, he retrieved his iPad from the car, and spent the other half of the play taking photos. (We tried putting a damper on his enthusiasm, because we know from experience that he can take upwards of 2,000 photos per day of one item that he loves.)

Shrek's mom sat near us, and asked her son to come meet his biggest fan after the production. Micah was thrilled beyond words to have his photo taken with his new hero, and Shrek was impressed with the sheer number of photos that Micah had of the play. (He didn't even see the tip of the iceberg, for the record.)

Micah was up past midnight last night, singing and dancing and talking about nothing but Shrek, the Musical. He was up at the crack of dawn today, making plans to go see it again. I heard him give himself permission to go. It's now concrete in his mind that it's going to happen. We're all in for a very long weekend now, because ever 13.5 minutes I hear, "Shrek! Go!"

I'm wondering how much I can benefit from this. How many chores can a boy do to earn his way to see another musical production?