A Quiet Place

I'm supposed to be at The Muny right now. As in right now - as I'm typing this. My wife and I had tickets to The Muny this evening. We were headed to Missouri tomorrow so I had bought tickets a few weeks ago to go see Waitress this evening. Honestly, I thought practice would start next week, not this week.

I should back up. The Muny is the outdoor theater in St. Louis. Right in the heart of Forest Park. When my wife and I lived near Forest Park, we had season tickets and would walk from our condo to The Muny every other Thursday evening. You Chicago people have your Chicago things; it doesn't get much more St. Louis than walking through Forest Park on your way to The Muny on a summer evening.

Actually, it does get more St. Louis than that. In the summer of 2017 (maybe 2018?), one of the shows was Meet Me In St. Louis. If you want to do the most St. Louis thing imaginable, go see Meet Me In St. Louis, a musical about the 1904 Worlds Fair in Forest Park, and see it at The Muny in Forest Park, and then participate in the end-of-the-show sing-along to "Meet Me In St. Louie, Louie" while in St. Louis literally on the site of the 1904 World's Fair.

That's where I was supposed to be tonight. But a few days ago, when looking at the weather forecast (and looking at whether we'd be leaving Thursday evening or Friday morning), my wife and I called an audible. The weather wasn't looking promising (this theater is 100% outdoors), so I did some research. Here's the text I sent her:

We agreed that 81 degrees at the outdoor theater sounded a lot better than 92 degrees with a good chance of rain. And I think we made the right call because at this very moment - which would be nearing intermission in the show - there's a little storm descending on Forest Park:

I've been there for sudden thunderstorms before. We were sitting there watching Jesus Christ Superstar when it started raining out of nowhere and Jesus stopped mid-song and started laughing with Judas before they cut the mics. I thought he should have just stopped the rain, but what do I know?

ANYWAY, we're going to see the Sara Bareilles musical "Waitress" on Sunday night now. And we're leaving for Missouri tomorrow morning because my wife had a work call add on at 6:00 pm tonight. And THAT meant that when I got an email this afternoon saying that the entire practice would be open to the media – not just 30 minutes, the entire practice – I was able to attend. 447 words into this article and I'm just now telling you why I'm telling you all of that.

It's crazy how close I came to missing this one. If there's no rain in the forecast, we'd have been en route to The Muny when I received the email about open practice. Also, if my wife didn't have the 6:00 work call, we might have left for Missouri this evening.

But I got to be there. Two entire hours of practice. I mean, I just made the joke on Twitter this morning about waiting for Camp Rantoul to open and then I get an open practice tonight. I joked with some staff members near the beginning of practice that they finally opened up a practice... and I was thisclose to being at The Muny.

What's that? You don't care about any of this and want me to talk about the practice? First off, hi, have we met? Second, OK.

This was the quietest practice I've attended. Spring ball, fall ball, Rantoul, Florida Avenue Athletic Fields, stadium, Irwin Indoor - this was the quietest practice. That doesn't mean "there was no energy" and that doesn't mean they weren't working hard. It just means that they were working on communication. It will take me a while to explain this but... that's what you signed up for.