I'll give you one guess as to who had a Super Mom moment and promised her autistic son she would take him into Boston on the most crowded night of the Year. Yep! You got it, ME! Now if you have been following the news at all you KNOW there was a snow storm headed our way and
it decided that, of all the freakin' days of the year, it would pass through Boston on Dec 31st between the hours of 11AM and 2PM. At a nice clip too, 1"-2" per hour. Yes, that was 8 inches of snow in four hours! Well, since I am a nervous wreck, driving through snow is NOT something I choose to do and only venture out when I absolutely must. But here's the thing...when you make a promise, it means you MUST follow through. If you don't, you loose your credibility. So now, guess who drove two hours in the midst of a snowstorm to take her autistic child to a crowded
city to walk the streets in single digit temperatures? Hello, it's crazy old ME! Do I need a head scan or what?!
My husband, who is a native of the Boston area, is the one who takes GP to First night...or has done so for the last couple of years. Mind you, the last couple of years it has not snowed and it has NOT been freezing. So why, oh why, did I have to go? Because DH had to work. As if paying the mortgage was more important than saving me from a heart attack! Hello! GP was so sad; he "invited" me. Oh, if you only knew how rare that is. GP never invites me to do fun stuff unless Gino is unavailable. So when GP asked "Mom will go with Gene?", I said "Wow, that sounds like fun, I think we can do it!" and that was it.
I was way, and I mean WAY over my head, LOL!
So anyway, I did what I needed to do and kept my promise (prayers and pills do it for me, LOL!)
and it turns out that aside from the driving, I was just along for the ride. GP is like a Bostonian, who knew? He told me where to park, at Alewife. Then he told me to buy a Charlie Card, hello? What the heck is a Charlie Card? It's a card that works like a highway Speedpass but for the Mass Buss and transit System! I actually stopped a MBTA person to ask where I could buy this "what is that thing I need?",(I asked Gene who looked mortified that his Mom didn't know what the heck she was doing!) and she pointed to some machines where I could buy them. Then she showed me how to use them (no, you don't swipe it, that would be too easy!)
Anyway, once I had the card and we were in the train station GP took over.
This is GP after he had proven that yes, I almost got us on the wrong train. He said, "Now we take the green line to Park St" so I saw a green line train and I was going to board it and he says,
"No, Mom. That's the wrong one. It's only the B, C or D train" which all sounded Greek to me. Green is green, am I right? LOL! Well, It turns out that there are FOUR green line trains and the only one that doesn't take you to where we needed to go was the one I was telling him to board; The H train. So where the heck was the H? I don't know! I didn't see any letters on the train! LOL! But I did ask the conductor who said what? That GP was right, "All green line trains will take you there
except this one", duh!
So after that I just asked GP, "now what?" and
two train rides later and a brisk four block walk in blizzard like conditions we arrived at the Hynes Convention Center in Downtown Boston!
Sorry about the red eye, I couldn't figure out how to fix it; I'm still recovering from my trip, LOL! Since I had purchased our buttons through the mail we just walked right in and GP went straight to the service desk to ask "Where is the Anime exhibit?" To which the little old lady said, "ani-what?" and I felt my heart skip a beat.... OH, NOOOO! I said a little prayer that the exhibit would be there, somewhere. I had driven two hours at 40 miles per hour, swirved on the road, taken two trains and walked with snow blasting my face like a power washer and she doesn't know what he is talking about? Somebody shoot me! I am freezing and my back is drenched in sweat. Can you imagine that? I thought I would pass out! So anyway. GP looks at me and I told him we needed to check at another desk (she looked way too old to be a fan of Japanese Animation) and we asked, and asked and asked until we reached the third floor and there in a little room was the exhibit. AAAAAHHHHH!
Turns out this "exhibit" was a conference room where the New England Anime Society was playing Japanese cartoons. That's it, really. My thoughts were,"I drove all this way to watch Japanese cartoons?" and it turns out I had, LOL! That's all he wanted to do there...Three floors chock full of activities for the whole family and we were watching cartoons. It was just too funny!
Oh, but it gets better. Then GP says to me, "Now let's go to dinner, at the Prudential" and I think, " Oh, no. Here we go again!" But I agree and I tell him we have to put our jackets on and all our layers so can go outside. We bundle up like Eskimos, and put on our hats, scraves, gloves and I put on my backpack and we go down the escalators to the first floor and just as I start heading out the building GP says "It's this way" and I follow him.... Well, turns out that you can get to the Prudential Center from the Hynes
without going outside! You just have to walk, and walk, and walk some more, LOL! I just followed him. I figured he knew where he was going and sure enough....we were there! Un-be-lie-vable!
Well, he took me straight to the Food Court where he had sushi and soba noodles. His favorite food, these days anyway.
and look at this:
Japanese people call this eating, I call this
"fine motor skills"!
OK, after we ate GP made me walk for miles in freezing temperatures, got me on the right train to the right parking garage, and then we drove home. I took a shower and died. I mean, fell asleep until this morning, LOL! What a day....
So that was my First Night of 2009. Hope yours was just as exciting, B=)
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