mercredi 12 octobre 2005

Sleeping manners.

I love the ballet. I love the costumes and the dancing and the leaping and the pretty music. I love that people still get dressed up, for the most part, especially little girls who wear little party dresses who are just absolultely delighted to be there.

What I do not like about the ballet? RUDE RUDE PEOPLE.

The ballet is a civilised place. It is a place where you mind your manners and are respectful of other people. Okay, everywhere should be like that, but sadly, in this day and age, manners have gone on a quick decline. (I sound so stuffy.) Let me list the offenses that were suffered.

  • We had decent seats in the balcony, three rows back from the front. Now, the way seats in theatres are designed are that people need to SIT BACK in their seats so that everyone may enjoy the marvels on stage. If you LEAN FORWARD, you block the view of the people behind you, who then must lean forward blocking the view of the people behind them, so on and so forth. Guess what happened? YES. The people in the front row were practically sprawled out all over the front of the balcony, blocking the view of everyone behind them. Keep in mind that they were the ONLY three people doing so. Everyone else sitting in the front row was sitting BACK in his/her seats, not FORWARD. So I tapped the girl in front of me who was correspondingly sitting forward because I couldn't see. She wasn't smart (er, rude?) enough to tap the annoying twit in front of her to tell her to sit back, so she missed out on the first act. Not my problem.

  • When you wears perfume/cologne, you should wear only enough so that the only people who can smell it are those whose noses are practically in your neck (or wherever you spritzed it). You should NOT be wafting scent so that everyone in the world can tell that you're wearing. It is offensive to the nose. It is especially offensive when you are in an enclosed space and not moving, thereby assaulting the olfactory senses of everyone around yourself.

  • Cell phones should be turned OFF. OFF. We are watching a performance! There are people on stage twirling and stuff! You are even reminded to turn off your cell phone at the beginning of the performance. That's when you check to make sure that your phone is indeed off. Don't assume. MAKE SURE. And answering your ringing cell phone during the performance is a definite no.
That's all that I can remember, but it was enough. Oh, I should point out that in the final act, the seats behind the balcony-sprawlers were empty, so one of the adult offenders actually ENCOURAGED the little girl she was sitting next to go back to sprawling all over the balcony. It is BAD behaviour like that that leads me to want to chuck already-been-chewed gum at your back. But I didn't. Because while I have immature thoughts, I don't always act on them. Especially not at the ballet.