The Theater

rrich · 16th July 2008, 01:24 PM

A well dressed young couple in their mid twenties arrives at the theater 30 minutes early and hurry to their orchestra, center, 5 rows back, seats. They sit there reading the Playbill while waiting for the play to start. Finally the lights start to dim as a very well dressed older woman rushes to her seat leaving an empty between her and the young couple.

The young man is a bit irritated thinking that the older lady's escort is going to arrive late and disrupt his enjoyment of the show. About half way through the first act, the young man is getting more and more irritated thinking if I had to wait eight months for tickets for this show how could the seat next to me be empty.

At the end of the first act, the older woman takes her cell phone out of her purse and rushes out to the lobby. The older woman rushes back to her seat just as the curtain is rising for the second act. All this time the young man is getting more irritated. He is just obsessing over the empty seat next to him.

Finally at the intermission between the second and third acts, the young man leans over toward the older lady and asks, "We had to wait 8 months for our tickets. Do you know why this seat is empty?" The older lady lady says, "We had to wait the same 8 months for our tickets. But during the waiting my husband died." The young man replied, "Oh I'm sorry to hear that. But couldn't you have given the ticket to one of your husband's friends?" The older lady looked the young man straight in the eye and said, "Look, it was hard enough for me to sneak out of the funeral service and how would it look if I brought one of his friends with me?"