Viewpoint Journal » Power To The [Little] People!

6/25/2005

Whoa! It’s been a long day.

I can’t even tell you how hot it was today. Mainly because I was too busy trying to avoid throwing up from the heat and stress while engaging in one of America’s greatest summer pasttimes, taking the kids to an amusement park.

This time it was “Sesame Place,” and we were there for fun, and for a “Hi-5” concert. Well… At least we got to see “Hi-5.”

We saw Hi-5 not once, but twice! And on top of that, it turns out that we are all staying at the same hotel! In addition to that, it turns out that we’re all also staying on the same floor of the same hotel!

I found that out last night, while my two girls (ages 5 and 2) and I were standing near the elevator, waiting for my wife to come out so that we could go find something to eat. To keep my girls amused, I showed them a really cool toy; the ice machine! And we had lots of fun pushing the little handle and watching ice fall out.

From there we moved on to the art of catching the ice with one hand (because you have to use the other hand to push the little dispense button, of course) so that you could eat it. But I digress.

It was at this point, while lecturing my girls on the finer points of not stuffing too much ice in our mouths and not stomping our feet in the little puddles which sometimes form around ice machines, when a person walks out of his room and walks over to the elevator. I wasn’t paying attention, I was way too busy passing my secrets on to the next generation.

But then, the elevator arrived and the young man stepped into the elevator, turned, and pushed the button to go down to the lobby. I looked up just to say hello (I’m friendly that way) and did a double take. Yup, sure enough, it was Curtis, one of the Hi-5 cast members. I think he recognized the fact that I had just recognized him, and he smiled back. I just said hello and then the doors closed and that was that.

I thought to myself, “that was cool,” and went back to my tutoring. But when I told my wife a few minutes later, her eyes just about bugged out (which, I’ve got to think, really has to hurt).

If you’ve read my other posts on Hi-5, you’ll know that Julie and the kids are the groupies. I’m just more of an admirer. I think that, if you have young kids, this is a group worth turning your television on for. I like their music and I especially like their message.

And, as the past two days have shown me, these are just plain NICE people.

I got a friendly smile and a hello from Curtis last night, then Julie saw Shaun last night while he was checking in and had a nice conversation with him.

This morning, as we were heading out to breakfast, we all saw Karla and we had a friendly conversation with her all the way down to the lobby. Then, earlier this evening after the concerts at the park, I saw everyone but Kimee in the lobby gathering to do something together.

As I was walking by Shaun, I told him that we enjoyed the shows today and rather than just smile, say ‘thank you’, and let me continue walking on, he smiled, said thank you, asked me my name, mentioned that he had met Julie, and had a friendly conversation with me.

As I said, these are just nice people. And the casual conversations I’ve had so far with some of the cast members has been much more fun and interesting to me than watching them in action on stage. Don’t get me wrong, they are terrific on stage, as I’ve mentioned in past posts. But for me, this was an opportunity to see how they handled their fans (and casual admirers like myself).

One other thing about today before I go to bed (Julie and the kids are all passed out already and I should follow their wise example).

Today was a really HOT day, and to be quite honest, I had a horrible day. The character breakfast we attended this morning was, in my opinion, just blah. The rides, though fun, had lines, which you would expect; but even some of Sesame Place’s wading areas had lines!

To make matters worse, my head began to ache dully right around 10:30am, stayed with me for about 3 hours, then turned into a monster of a headache, the kind which makes you want to just pass out on a bed, or the sidewalk, which ever is more convenient.

Julie had obtained tickets for us to see two shows today. We saw Hi-5’s first show at noon and their last show at 4:15. In the first show, it was apparent that the Sesame Place concert venue had a lot of rules. They even had security people around to keep the kids from getting out in front of the stage!

Now, I can understand that you might want to have security personnel around to protect the children, but to keep them in line? Yeah, I’m sure all those 2 to 5-year-olds looked like they could be quite the trouble-makers!

I shouldn’t be so hard on the Sesame Place staff, but it just seemed a bit silly to me. Normally, with Hi-5 concerts, the kids love to dance in the aisles or even form a Pre-K mosh pit in front of the stage.

So, anyway, after the 12pm show ended, Hi-5 left the stage area and we, the audience, went out to play in the park. But later, for the 4:15 show, something happened. During the show, the kids all seemed to just kind of move towards the stage. For some reason, the security personnel and event staff of Sesame Place didn’t do anything to stop them, so a big group of kids formed.

I was out for most of that concert, in the bathroom, I’m ashamed to say, trying not to throw up. But when I came back in briefly during the middle of the show, the kids were out in front of the stage. Then, later, when I came back at the very end of the show, the kids were all cheering and waving and the it looked as if an official Hi-5 Mosh had been in full swing. The Hi-5 cast was right there, at the edge of the small stage, smiling and shaking hands and saying hello.

They really seemed to just love having the kids right there, dancing and singing along and, well, acting like kids. And the kids LOVED being close to the cast and then having the cast come up to them to greet them. It was very heartening to see, especially after spending the better part of an hour in a bathroom stall trying to talk my stomach out of doing what it was seriously thinking of doing.

Earlier in this post I mentioned that we went to Sesame Place today to have fun and see Hi-5. Well, I had a horrible day, but despite everything, I was very happy to see my kids having so much fun at the concert. I’m a Dad, which means, I love my children. And like a selfish loving Dad, I want everyone else to love my kids too. I think the Hi-5 cast sincerely loves kids, and that is yet another thing I admire about them.

Later, Julie told me that the Sesame Place staff hadn’t changed the rules, it was just that the kids really wanted to be near the stage and a bunch of them had walked out and stayed there. Even my youngest, Marleigh, eventually joined them.

I thought to myself, “well, what do you know, power to the little people.” And thus, you have the title of this post. Am I original or what?

Don’t answer that!

David Flanagan
Viewpointjournal.com