Dogged at the Pony Show

Good gracious and gollly-liscious!! We are now the most popular girls in 3rd grade 'cause we saw “My Little Pony Live! The World’s Largest Tea Party!” (at the invite of Peyton Marshall and Pauls Toutonghi)

We began at the theatre bar preparing questions should there be a Q & A with the ponies. My primary concerns were:

1. Do My Little Ponies shit gumdrops?
2. Was it culturally insensitive to ask the ponies if they were made by exploited workers in China or if they contained lead paint?

The event started on a ferocious note - we were still finding our seats when the ponies hit the stage. Imagine climbing past rows of little girls in princess outfits, with faces like hissing, snarling cats, shouting, “I CAN'T SEE THE PONIES!”

And there was so much and so little to see – pastel pony suits, glitter rainbows, cardboard balloons, a dragon doing hip hop rapping and scratching, dancing lady bugs, and a giant, pink inflated tea pot with a suggestively curved, puckered spout that released white clouds into the air. The show was shrill and insistent, yet, somehow, horribly soft. I felt I was on cheap ecstasy, listening to 33 rpm show tune records played at 45, all the while being pelted with Marshmallow Peeps.The frightening thing is how happy this made me!

Most of the girls were enthralled, singing along, waving paper tea cups, with eyes as big a saucers taking every prance and sparkle on the stage. Some were overwhelmed and were carried out laughing like lunatics and shaking in their velvet gowns and tiaras like epileptic aristocracy. The woman next to me had her hands full and decided to leave at intermission. Her husband, she said, was at a strip club. “I get ponies, he gets beaver, un –uh, show’s over.”

My fun ended abruptly as well when the usher came forward and kneeled in front of my seat. Her hair was done in crisp wings and she smelled like Avon. “Do you have children here?” she asked, “Because taking pictures of children in the theatre is making some parents nervous.” Her face was polite and inscrutable.

After that the entire crowd seemed dark eyed and hostile. I wondered which ones thought I was a sex offender. I decided that if anyone confronted me I would say I was taking photos for a website memorial to my departed little girl who died in a tragic pony accident. “Katy loved her little ponies! She just loved them!”