I save ticket stubs. Ticket stubs for anything and everything... theatre, sporting events, tourist attractions, and even movies. Don't worry they are all neatly contained in a ziplock bag, but they are all there. Why I do this, I don't really know. Do I really need to remember that I saw the movie Sling Blade on March 29, 1997 at the Chandler Laguna Village AMC Theater (a $3 matinee no less!)? Probably not, but there are a lot of memories in that bag that is for sure.
I saw a stage production of the musical 42nd Street this past Friday. I was telling my mom how it really did not stand up to my memories of the first time I saw it. Back in my younger days, for three consecutive summers I headed into NYC to catch a Broadway musical. I would first trek into the city with my grandfather to buy the tickets, then return later in the week to see the Wednesday matinee show with my grandmother. 42nd Street was the show of the second summer. I found the stub again yesterday, it was August 1981...making me 13 years old at the time.
23 years later, 42nd Street has come around the corner again. The show has not changed terribly, but life certainly has. My grandfather died of a stroke just 4 years after that summer of 1981, while my grandmother, after a long illness and ravaged by Alzheimer's, mercifully left us just five years ago.
The pretty carefree, but not-terribly cool kid from NJ is now a marginally cooler adult living in Arizona. The wide-eyed youngster overwhelmed by the big city and the buzz of Broadway, now parks his Honda at a suburban theater designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and dares the production to "wow" him. After nearly 50 different musicals (I have the stubs to prove it!) later, that "wow" does not happen as often as I would like.
But even if the show is bad, I still enjoy going. I hope my grandparents do too. They certainly left me with a legacy. More than two decades later, it is me, at least in spirit, who is taking them along to the show now.
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