Rude Awakening

The Sperry Topsiders, khaki pants and absence of socks in winter lead me to believe this man is a retired executive who owns a boat. Or seeks to give that impression. The fact that he doesn’t seem to think there’s anything wrong with blocking people’s path to the bathroom leads me to believe his career ended unsatisfactorily.

As “Rocky Horror” has been to October for quite some time, so now is “Spring Awakening” to the merry month of May. Conversely, no theatre in its right mind would open “A Christmas Carol” on Independence Day, even if that weren’t the slot soon to be reserved for home-grown productions of “Hamilton” and likely to remain so until the current generation of regional theatre producers retires. Season programming choices like these are forces of nature.

There’s a very timely alternative to “Hamilton,” though, one I’d be happy to co-author, maybe for no money at all, and this is it: “Rude Awakening.” I envision a celebration of filterlessness. A pathological Promethius unbound. Working song titles include “What’s New, Pussy Hat?” and “The Hell, You Can!”

My inspiration came today as I was exiting the bathroom at my usual coffee haunt. The bathrooms there open onto a short corridor accessible via a narrow passageway between two rows of furniture, and one gentlemen had arranged himself at his table on one side of the passageway such that more than half of it was obstructed by his feet. Remarkably, he didn’t seem to care that people were having to sidle around him, something I assume he’s come to regard as the natural order of things, thanks in part to people like me who feel it’s easier to resign than resist.

So is there a rude awakening in progress, or am I just looking for trouble? I do that sometimes. Other times it comes looking for me.