Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Come See the Show

My 5-year-old daughter gave me a ticket to the show, and also gave me a job as the Ticket Checker. The show was about to begin and I had to check all the tickets of the stuffed animals in the theatre. But like I usually do, I had to come up with a question or two to give our time together more quality. "Excuse me, ma'am," I told her respectfully, pointing to some of the animals, "but these people are telling me that they don't have any tickets, they don't need tickets, and when I try to approach them about it, they call me a racist."

She didn't know or even care what a racist was, but she showed me another animal who was in the "wings" of the theatre in her bedroom. "Well," she said, "I'm letting him see the show from here because he didn't have any money to buy a ticket, so I said he could see the show from here for free."

"So you're going to let them sit in the seats watch the show for free also?"

"Uh-huh."

I thought I'd take it a little farther. "But this one," I said, pointing to another animal, "took someone's good ticket and copied it! So she's stealing a ticket, and not paying you the money."

She examined the two tickets carefully, trying hard to see if they were both really legitimate tickets. She wanted to say it was really a good ticket, but she couldn't. I kept pointing out fraudulent marks to hold to the point. She finally turned her attention to the animals who forged tickets and concluded, "These animals were wondering around and heard about the show and wanted to bring in something to show that they knew about it."

"Maybe we could set up a section just for the people who don't have tickets. They could stand in the back."

I said, "They won't be able to see the show from there. And there are already people who want to stand in the back."

I got the impression that she would never have them leave and miss the show. I was impressed by her compassion and her insistence to perform the show for anyone who wanted to see it. But I was still convinced by my legalistic approach and tried one more time.

"Well, the person who you let copy the ticket knew you would let her stay, and she told her friends and gave them copies of the ticket also. So now you don't have one, but three fake tickets. And they're fighting with the people who bought seats the right way, and hurting them!"

She was alarmed and told me, "I will make them stop fighting. And if they do it again, I will not let them in! I also have a manager I have to go to. I just run the show. But I'll just go to my phone over here," she interrupted herself, "It's a pretend phone. But I'll just call 911. Now we have to start the show! I don't want to deal with tickets anymore."

After having done the best job I could as the Ticket Checker, I felt so ashamed of my legalistic behavior, and in awe of the compassion she had on the people who wanted to see the show. She never once compromised the system, or abused her authority. But she kept revealing to me more of how the system works, as well as the compassion and understanding she had to try to take in the people, all the people, who wanted to see the show.

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