Nite Out With Avery

December 2018

I'm the luckiest guy. So when my wife told me about her good luck and that I would be taking our 10 year old grandson to see School of Rock I was delighted but not surprised.

Margie's good luck was that her call to buy tickets followed some silver spooner who had called to cancel and Margie got front row seats.

My good luck is perpetual. For example, I almost always have good weather when I travel. I can only remember one trip since 1968 that was rain bothered. But that was to Halifax, so, duh, not much lost.

My fun nite with Avery started when I picked him up after school. All we had to do was travel 10 subway stops and have dinner before the curtain rose in three hours. I was more worried about how to keep a ten year old entertained than I was about being late.

At dinner Avery is a conversationalist. That is he wants to find out about you. “How was your day today? What kind of things did you do?” are typical of the questions he asked. I, in turn, was interested in what Avery was learning at school. I was hoping for reading, writing and arithmetic. And fearful I was going to hear about gender studies and indigenous legal issues. Mostly he just complained about his French teacher so I'd say school was ok.

Dinner was at a touristy Italian restaurant in the Eaton Centre full of after work shoppers and people also on their way to the theater. Our waiter could tell we were a special couple and treated us both like adults.

I'm a big believer that children need to be helped to be very good at at least one thing to give them self confidence. A safe feeling that there is something they can fall back on. For Avery that is skiing. His parents are avid and have brought Avery into the fold. He win races in his age group all winter long.

After dinner with a good hour to spare we went to Indigo to look at books. Avery reads a lot. He's gotten thru all the Harry Potter books and is now reading others of the same genre. One day I hope he reads a book called The Asiatics which I read when I was about twelve. It fueled my wanderlust which I exercised a decade later for fun then and a bunch of stories now.

I promised Avery I would get into Harry Potter this winter. Taking his advice will add to his self confidence.

From Indigo we headed to the theater. On our way, as we were leaving the Eaton Centre, we came across a pop up exhibit that Amazon was using to showcase products that could be operated via the internet. Here's a list of what I remember: door locks, thermometer, stove, lights, music, a refrigerator door iPad that sees in the fridge and make a to buy list, window blinds, a travelling vacuum and more I don't remember.

Then we went to the theater and our front row seats. That was cool. We were sitting right on top of the orchestra spitting distance from the stage. During the performance we could see the whites of the performers eyes. Which meant we could see their every expression and had a full appreciation of how hard they work to stay in character.

The School of Rock story revolves around Dewey Finn, a failed rocker, who stumbles into substitute teaching. It's a busy role for the actor playing Dewey.

Our nite extraordinaire was punctuated with a flash when we met the actor playing Dewey in the lobby after the show and I took a picture of him with Avery. Avery was extra excited on the trip home. All smiles thru every subway station.

And I got an A in the school of grandfathering.

December 16, 2018

December 3, 2019