April 27, 2007
However, the parents of the Kindergarteners were the ones that absolutely baffled me. I can not completely blame the parents for being fools, but they were the adults. The way they configured the gym for the performance was somewhat baffling. They have a stage but opted not to use it for one reason or the other. Therefore, everyone was on the same level (minus the three-tiered three foot high risers that the kids were on). When you couple the fact that the children were brought into the gym via a parent/family engulfed route, when a simple stage right entry point was available, it just exacerbated matters.
The instant a child was in sight, every parent (other than me and maybe two others) flocked toward the line of children. I'm just curious when society decided to make every event a Playstation 3 giveaway on release day. It literally looked like a bunch of crack fiends rushing the door at the methadone clinic. That was the first sign that doing any kind of serious video work should be abandoned and I should just do my best to get what I could get (which means don't worry about the other children just get video of Aubree).
After the initial rush of parents flocking to their children, it didn't really stop. Every parent lined up the center aisle taking pictures. Two other fathers and I had cameras within eighteen inches of each other and all three of us were dumbfounded. One father made the other the other father and I laugh by saying, "The center aisle is for loading and unloading only." Just out of curiosity, since when is a camera phone an acceptable way to take pictures of ones child? We're not talking a Japanese camera phone; we're talking an American one. The scene was such a mad house you couldn't even tell that the children had started singing.
After that, you would think that parents would have gone back to their seats. But, no, there were parents sitting in the center aisle nearly blocking any and all possibilities of doing a "class" video. Then, the absolutely unthinkable happened. A father and his older daughter meandered back into my area. I'm standing there with still camera in hand and video camera propped up on a tripod standing some six feet tall (red light on; recording). The father looks me dead in the eye, stops and turns dead nuts center of my shot. If this was target practice, he'd be full of holes.
At that point, I was ready to snap the neck of anyone that uttered a semi-foul thing in my general direction. However, I remained calm and went mobile. I took the video camera off the tripod and moved forward. I literally had to keep moving forward, too. The second I got somewhere a parent would walk by blurring the shot or stopped in front of me impeding the shot. I literally walked to the back row of chairs right of the center aisle and stood so close to the parents in the back row I could have tea bagged three and not even had known it.
You would think all would be well and good at this point. You would be sadly mistaken. The situation was less than optimal to say the least. However, the real trick came when I needed to do video with the right hand and stills with the left. It's a good thing I know how to see to different images at the same time because that's what I had to do. My right eye was in the view finder of the video camera making sure I kept Aubree in the shot and the left eye was looking at the screen on the digital camera taking pictures of the PowerPoint slide that was up on the screen.
Oh! And since when is it acceptable to use PowerPoint during a play?
Then the real obvious sense of the digression of the human race back into the caveman era began. The background noise was absolutely absurd during the entire presentation. It was like not only were the children learning how to perform but the parents were learning how to enjoy the show. Noise from the audience, at one point, was easily louder than the mic'ed up children. No one knew how to sit down and be quiet. I was a church mouse leaning up against the back wall. I had to be, I was recording. The noise level got so bad that Aubree's teacher got on the mic and told the audience to be quiet. Did that work? No. Why does anyone have to do anything they don't want to do, like being quiet? That's the nature of American society today I guess.
So my experience in trying to make good photography works was less than pleasurable. My battery ended up dying as the school's principal droned on thanking everyone and their brother and he had every right to do that. It's my fault for not making sure the battery was fully charged to begin with.
Then the dismissal came. I really had wished that the teachers would have thought more clearly about how they dismissed the children and what the obvious human reaction would have been at that point. When the announcement was made that, "We'll release your child to you when we see you," that's when I knew that my daughter was going to be the patient one and I had plenty of time to pack up my gear.
There was a mad rush towards the stage. Parents were stampeding to get their children as if it was a competition to see who was going to be the first one to get their child. Parents were literally trampling each other to reach their children. Teachers wanted this to happen because it was somehow safer?
I packed up my gear, put on my jacket, parted the Red Sea to find Aubree sitting patiently on the top row of the risers waiting for her daddy to come swoop her out of the madness and that's exactly what I did. We took the quickest path between Aubree's location and what I knew was an exit door. Between making eye contact with Aubree and us being out of the mad house may have been literally fifteen seconds.
Now, explain to me why parents holding their children continued to stand up front blocking walkways, aisles, and exit points. People were taking more pictures and having conversations in the front row where children were supposed to be picked up. I was simply dumbfounded.
The moral of the story is, Aubree did a fantastic job and that's all that should really matter to me. But, I'm very concerned about the downfall of society.
Video of the play is available exclusively at chrisshort.net.
Posted by: Chris Short at
05:40 AM
| Comments (9)
| Add Comment
Post contains 1184 words, total size 7 kb.
Posted by: Improbulus Maixmus at April 27, 2007 06:55 AM (jQsc/)
Posted by: greyrooster at April 27, 2007 08:08 AM (nC58B)
Posted by: Howie at April 27, 2007 08:17 AM (YHZAl)
Posted by: Randman at April 27, 2007 10:15 AM (Sal3J)
ewe.
tea.
eff.
although i read here a lot (top 3), i don't know what part of the country you're in (so that i know not to live near these jackasses - for i would go to jail straight away). how is this even moderately acceptable?
Posted by: dave at April 27, 2007 10:26 AM (JC+x3)
Posted by: allahakchew at April 27, 2007 01:45 PM (BrndJ)
USA, all the way!
Posted by: Michael Weaver at April 27, 2007 04:03 PM (2OHpj)
Posted by: Chris Short at April 27, 2007 06:28 PM (sktv/)
Posted by: greyrooster at April 29, 2007 12:24 AM (x+qDi)
34 queries taking 0.0639 seconds, 164 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
