Written by Theatre Girl

Oh, yes, it was going to be a very good day. The day I was going to see Paul Wylie... the last possible time ever! My mother, my friend Laurel, and I were going to drive to Seattle, stop and shop around for a bit, and then head over, meet other Seattle Paul fans, and SEE PAUL. I could hardly contain myself. Everything was happy, happy; we ate lunch at Red Robin, shopped a bit (we went to a lot of stores at the mall... this plays a part later), and basically marched all over the place. Then... as we were in the car, driving to the ferry... I felt my pocket where the tickets had been... and they weren't there. "The tickets aren't in my pocket! They're not there!" I shrieked. Frantically, Laurel and I searched the car while my mom looped the car around to head back to the mall. We first searched Red Robin -- garbage cans, bathroom stalls, you name it -- and then retraced our steps through the mall, going to every store we'd been to and asking the cashiers if anyone had turned anything in to them. We had been planning to meet the other Paul fans at 6:00, but it quickly became obvious that it was not going to happen. After an seemingly endless amount of time combing the mall, we decided to catch the 7:00 ferry, rush to the Key Arena, and try to buy scalped tickets, buy crappy nosebleed tickets at the booth, or try to have the original tickets traced. Racing towards the Key Arena entrance at about 7:35, a scalper apprached us, and we bought three not-too-bad tickets from him. Not as good as our original $55 ones... but OK. We then went up to the booth to see if we could get our original seats back. We couldn't, but the nice lady gave us some free tickets (crappy, sure, but free!) We compared the six tickets and decided to go with the scalped ones. After bounding inside and purchasing a program, we walked in as Katia was doing her white jumpsuit Gershwin number. We were pretty far up, in the corner, an OK view (right above Paul during the Olympic parody -- that corner, luckily ^_^). I hyperventalated (sp.?) through Sleepers, with the binoculars on him the whole time, thinking "This isn't too bad." I kept my eyes on him throughout the whole Olympic parody -- he was hilarious! My pictures better turn out. Intermission rolled around and I said to Laurel "Let's walk down the steps here to the ice border -- see what the view's like down there." We stepped down, marveling at how close the ice was to us (no more than ten feet away, horizontally), and, on a side note, happened to spot John Curley (of Seattle Evening Magazine fame) in our corner. I mentioned that I'd heard that for the beginning of the second half the skaters came out, walked through the crowd, and went out on the ice and put on their skates. We decided to stay right where we were during the intermission, thinking "Maybe we'll hang around here to see them go into the crowd, if they let us..." Well, out came the skaters on the opposite side of the arena, walking RIGHT PAST all those people with on-ice seats, and dissappeared up the stairs. Laurel and I moved a step closer so we were about two steps away from the ice and sat down, on the stairs. Out came the skaters, in the corner entrance about 20 feet away from us! They came down the stairs and... headed in our direction! I sat, mouth hanging, as Paul walked no more than 5 feet in front of me. After they went out on the ice and put their skates on, they did this weird jumble of elements to some music from "The 5th Element." Paul was doing spread eagles right in front of us!! After that, Laurel and I crouched close to the stairs, even after the lights went off, feeling very naughty for sitting there. I half expected to get a tap on the shoulder at any moment. AS skaters did their programs, I continued to throw little glances behind me, to see if anyone was coming after us. But alas! We went undiscovered! (Or they didn't care enough to boot us back to our seats!) And suddenly -- Paul came out, to skate "Go the Distance!!!" He, again, couldn't have been more than seven feet away from us at points in his program. When it was over, Laurel and I hoisted my "You're the best, Paul!" sign, screaming like lunatics. I could see his eyes, his smile, every hair on his head -- it was amazing!! Then, the finale -- Paul did hissolo right in front of us, cool leap and all! He looked our way, too! If only he'd shaken hands on our side -- that would have made the night surreal!! I left the arena with a huge smile. What a guy! What a night!

In all -- I suppose it was worth the $200 I ended up paying for it. My rear ached after sitting on the concrete steps for the second half of the program, but it was WELL worth it. I waved at Paul. And he smiled back. ^_^