Recently I did something out of the ordinary and attended a concert featuring a chamber orchestra and a concert pianist playing one of Beethoven’s piano concerti. When I read about the upcoming performance, I looked at the seating chart for the small, intimate venue, and noticed a single unoccupied seat available in the front row. That spoke opportunity to me, so I clicked and bought the seat.
The stage was set up for the orchestra without the piano for the first portion of the event, and I soon realized that my seat would not afford me the view of the pianist, as the instrument would take up the middle of the stage and block my view, but I was there to hear the concerto more than to watch the performer’s range of emotions (or lack of them) while their fingers flew over the keyboard.
Soon the place began to fill up, and an elderly woman came and sat next to me, clad in a boiled wool jacket with a scarf, pillbox hat and typical jewelry for somebody her age. Now, I am also considered an old lady, but I’m talking generational older, as in she could have passed for my mother older. After the nodding pleasantries of acknowledgment were exchanged, we settled in while I looked over the program.
After a few minutes, the lady looked over at me and asked, “May I see the program?” I obliged. She proceeded to turn the pages, and then wiped noticeably at her sniffling nose before returning her fingers to the paper. Feeling slightly sickened, as she closed the program to return it to me, I replied, “Why don’t you keep that one, and I’ll just grab a new one.” She thanked me. I thanked my sense of manners that enabled me to avoid taking somebody else’s microbiome home with me, while not letting on that I felt a bit grossed out.
The concert started, and we got to the second piece of the scheduled four when, from next to me, came a ring tone. It was my seat partner’s cell phone, which was in a side pocket of her purse. It went off three times at intervals, as she struggled to turn it on and do something with it to shut it up. Somebody was calling her, unaware that she was unavailable.
Now, I admit to having trouble with a device in the past, but it was not my cell. I set it to mute and vibrate only for at least three hours at the start of any concert event. I did, however, have the misfortune of leaving a security device (a combination alarm and bug finder) in my purse which decided to signal me toward the end of a concert. I didn’t know how to turn it off, because the instructions didn’t include that. I hadn’t heard a peep from it before. Thankfully it was not a screeching loud signal, so I simply buried the device deep in my purse and rolled its fabric up in my lap, squelching it long enough for the start of the finale, which drowned it out altogether. My next move would’ve been to say the heck with how much it cost and smashing it to kingdom come with my shoe.
I don’t know if this lady had just returned to concert attendance, had bought a new phone, had just emerged from a cave or simply didn’t care, but when the second piece was finished, two of the musicians spoke to my seat partner, naturally concerned that repeated eruptions would ruin the concert. They couldn’t know, of course, that she wasn’t with me, and their eyes kept switching between us. I was mortified. I didn’t want to be banned from this venue on my first time there.
I offered to help find the mute on her device, only to be outvoted by a seated patron behind us who simply took the phone and turned it off. I don’t know if she was a friend or relative, or just a local with the perfect balance of street smarts, techno savvy and a politeness filter set to “slightly brazen.” I bless her in my prayers every night.
The rest of the first act went off without so much as a cough, and during intermission I received a fresh program from the usher. I explained to her what happened, and she said she would make sure it was addressed.
So the moral of the story is, know your device and how to keep it quiet. Don’t get any of your bodily fluids on other people’s things. And finally, when faced with public humiliation, be slightly brazen.
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