A Show for Aliens 1 - 20 June, 2007 Intergalactic Incognito Travels present: Roger Waters in Live Concert at Oakland Arena, California, Earth. Local Life Form Disguise Included.

	Our first ticket to some culture after several years of parental isolation

Sid has a theory, which states that aliens had landed on Earth long ago, and now live happily among us. Those less adaptive disguise as lunatics and homeless nuts, the more resourceful or experienced practice for example law or other inhumane vocations. It would seem though that they all love the Floyds.

We yearned to use our handy granny and get out to soak up some culture -- we overheard that Roger Waters was about to perform in Oakland Arena. It took us several days of exploring and booking tickets on the internet; thanks to Hippo's pessimistic nature I had eventually arrived at a conclusion that tickets were unavailable -- and two days before the concert I had suddenly learned that we were going after all. We did not even think about driving to Oakland, especially in the early evening rush hour. Instead, we agreed to meet at the Fremont BART (Bart Area Rapid Transportation) terminal and took the heaviest part of the way by train. Standing in line to the Arena we discovered that we should have better read the numbers on the tickets -- it was seven o'clock and the gates were about to open, while we came convinced that the concert would start at seven.

	Kids with granny on a trip to the Big Sur River mouth.

We wandered through the corridors, had a pizza and beer, and watched the bustle. That's when it had occurred to us that such a concert must be an all-galactic affair. After all, where else than in California can any aliens relax publicly without fear of interference? I have not seen such a great display of outstanding features for a long time -- individuals seemingly ill used to propelling themselves by two limbs, passed close by, wearing their looks more like a disguise loaned to them by their travel agency than something they grew up in; our suspicion of fraud was meant to be distracted from by here a noticeably asymmetric face, there some un-American looking, really bad teeth, yonder a smock that no earth-born man would dare to don, not even for a costume ball.
The fact we ourselves would fall amongst the younger half of the visitors, was natural to expect. I was somewhat surprised that men constituted about eighty percent of the fans. Four- to eight-member packs of gentlemen in various stages of beer-gutness and baldness roamed the halls. A majority of them, however, sported some T-shirt with Pink Floyd theme. I've also registered extremely frequent occurrence of tattoos, earrings, leather jackets and brightly colored hair. Those few women I saw looked generally as if they had caught a time travel loop right out of Woodstock. Sipping our beer, we pointed to each other the especially well fashioned creations (should we ever encounter someone who speaks Czech here, we may get our mouths smashed). At one opportunity I started to laugh loudly and Sid declared that I was apparently being stoned. Well, it would not be a surprise. Although security had confiscated our water bottle at the entrance (to let the producer make money on selling drinks), they seemed ignore joints -- smoke snaked through both the arena and the halls -- and while part of it surely originated in on-stage special effects, the rest had an unmistakable flavor.

	Picnicking on one of our longer trips.

Slowly we found our seats and discovered our immediate neighbor was one very neatly fashioned alien. Already in hilarious mood, he would never take off his orange glasses (not even in darkness) and he looked as if he waited for this concert for his whole life. He announced that he had bought his tickets in the first minute it was available for sale online, and said he already had goose bumps and was so looking forward to it and so on. In the moment the lights went down, thousands of cigarette lighters flared up and we were offered an opportunity to distinguish smells of different varieties of pot. A young woman with a flower behind her ear, three rows in front of us to the right, got up. And then an elderly dude run up on the stage and the show begun. And right with some hits of The Wall. The young woman started performing sinewy dance creations in the room limited to her seat. I will tell you without much ado that in this, she lasted until eleven o'clock and that nobody would, to our mild surprise, smack her upside her head, neither was she led away in a straight jacket. Anything goes for the aliens here, they don't even have to work too hard to look normal.

Sadly, after a few intro songs, generally by the older Pink Floyd (Ummagumma, Animals, Wish You Were Here), came a weak moment. Just as I would not have guessed that I'd be ever able to see live "Floyds" perform, I had no clue that I would find Waters' later creations utterly moronic. Perhaps it's due to my allergy to schematic simplification of the world view through the leftist prism, as well as solutions for instant "миру мир". I was noticeably far from being alone -- his audience, until then nailed to the seats, began to swirl, and a part of the persons (people?) used this gap in the show to visit restrooms, stretch their appendages, purchase beer, and chemically treat their brain cells. My Hippo followed me soon, just as a break was announced. With its end finally came the promised Dark Side of the Moon. Final additions came again from The Wall. We were leaving the concert seriously sound-shocked -- I don't know, how second-hand smoking of marihuana affects one's mind, but there was definitely a feeling of light-headedness -- question remains whether it was caused by pumping decibels, or not.

Especially while we were leaving the Arena, one could get an idea how many aliens had been present. Given the fact that the concert was practically sold out, which means several tens of thousands of fans, there was absolutely no crowd pouring out of the building, just scattered individual spectators walking away. We were bound to slow down only in one spot, namely on the overpass to the train station, but it was caused by obnoxious T-shirt dealers desperately trying to make a fire sale. Once we made it through their picket line, we arrived to our train by an easy walk, boarded quietly, and the train left. It was full enough that there were no more seats left for us, i.e. for a few stops until it thinned out again -- but there just was no concert mob there. Apparently a great deal of the audience had sublimated inconspicuously, or teleported on the spot.

	Conspirators.

Beside my new cultural background, I have gathered a few headaches as well. The director of Tom's school informed me sweetly that they won't, after all, open a new class to which Tommy could advance. This blew a great hole in my plans -- I had placed an application for Lisa there. I counted on our mamas taking it easier, if she could start her schooling career in the place she knows, where she likes to play, and where she could be with Tom. Lizzy loves Tom and follows him in every way -- and Tommy manages to often quiet Lisa down, helps her with dressing and eating -- they simply are a great couple.

The director offered me that both kids could go to their second campus, only a mile farther down the same road. I thought it a good idea, so I checked it out -- and was quite disappointed. I would not mind as much that the other school is located in an old house -- but I did object to gloomy dark rooms filled with old, beaten furniture, to overall impression of filth and neglect, plus a peculiar stink. Not that Tom's current campus was an apex of architectural perfection, but at least the teachers and admins there try to clean and brighten the rooms up, and it results in a merry, bright impression. I also think it's quite clean there, and it definitely does not emanate any suspicious smell.

	Lisa likes to swim in a floater.

I made a few more attempts to find another school -- with negligible outcome. If the affair was open at all and I managed to talk to a live person on the other end of the line, I learned that they were fully booked. In the end we decided to not change anything. Tom shall stay where he is, i.e. in the class for three year olds. He had started there last year, a bit ahead of his age, and attended it together with some fresh four year old children -- so why could he not continue, if he's not yet four?

Meanwhile I put him on a waiting list at our nearby "church" school. Besides having their office open through the summer, I really liked it there a lot. And they offer a year of Junior Kindergarten, which I find quite matching for Tommy, beginning next September. What they call Kindergarten here is an optional, zero-th year of elementary school. One may attend it at the local public school, where the child continues for the mandatory years (relatively strictly dictated by residence), which is "free" (as long as I forget all the taxes we pay and out of which -- among other things -- public education is financed). A kid can enter KG in September of the year when (s)he reaches five years of age, the threshold date being for some unexplainable reason, not August 31, but December 5. Therein lay the complication with Tom. Theoretically he could, having been born in October, start his 0th year in September 2008. Practically he shall be five in December (his regular term was around Christmas), and if he were not premature, he'd be forced to begin school in 2009. If he started in 2008, he'd be absolutely youngest in his class. If you add his handicaps of weaker English, left-handedness, slightly delayed fine muscle control and overall guilelessness. So far we lean towards sending him to school one year later (which is entirely parents' choice here), in 2009, as if he were born in term.

However, attending the pre-school at age five, with three and freshly four year old children, is also far from ideal. A school with one extra preparation class, offers an elegant solution -- Tommy won't be going to a "big" school, but he'll spent time among his peers, who for some reason are also delayed. We hope it would prevent Tommy from "boredom" with small kids, or stress from not "keeping up". The church pre-school accepts children from three years -- so in the next cycle, Lisa could transfer there -- and we could have kids in one place again and would not have to function as a taxicab across half of the town. Naturally, all these are mere plans, we shall see how the situation unfolds.

	Tom, equipped with waterwings, still clutches his little crab floater.

Another unexpected (and not quite pleasant) surprise came in regard of Tom's swimming. This year he had been going to his swimming classes unaccompanied by a parent; one group counted four children per one instructor. Tommy really liked swimming, he seemed to enjoy it tremendously. The problem emerged once we opened our own pool -- Tom discovered that it's deep in there. His class usually took place in two feet of water and the children had learned that it's possible to stand in it. And so poor Tom tried to bounce off the bottom of our pool and always panicked when he could not reach. It took me several days to explain to him that if he wants to swim, he must stretch on the surface. I'd like to point out that I really did not expect from the class to really fully teach him how to swim -- but having Tom unlearned all basics threw me off balance. For the initial two days Tom, equipped with waterwings, clutched the handles of his floating crab with white knuckles, and only slowly scaled the surface of our pool. Eventually we had managed to convince him that it was all right to swim with just those wings -- and later to cope with us not being in immediate reach (that is he would swim even two or three yards away from an adult's hold). Now he jumps in -- very carefully, safety his first concern, just to get least wet. Well, Tom has since birth had a very specific opinion about water -- back then he used to express it quite loudly.

	Lisa grows right in front of your eyes.

Lisa makes great strides in speech. Unfortunately, she has been practicing every waking moment (and sometimes in her sleep, too). Frequent are the days when I have a feeling my head shall explode, if I hear one more sentence, song, comment or request, made in her high voice. Lisa just does not stop talking -- talks while eating dinner, while watching TV, while reading a book, while playing, she keeps coming to me to start conversations. When she runs out of things to talk about, she starts repeating whatever Tom says; words and sentences that she likes, she manages to mumble ten times in a row. She has mustered all Tom's school songs and then some. Blanka and Elizabeth taught her a (Czech) rhyme about a frog who climbed a ladder pulling wires -- the concept of electricity appears to be foreign to hoer -- and so she says pigheadedly "pulling Elizabeth" instead. They often talk to each other at length with Tom -- the only problem are their evening arguments over which fairy tells to play. Lisa loves Rabbits in a hat and James (from Thomas the Tank Engine) and that's that.

Her music preferences are quite interesting -- apparently she loves rhythmic pieces by Hop-Trop (a Czech folk group), but likes Loreena McKennitt, too. The other day, on our way to some visit, she requested a "song from the Fishes" -- Sting's soundtrack to The Living Sea. After returning home, we tried to play this very movie instead of their favorite fairy tales. Lisa asked for James again -- I tried to explain that this would be her fairy tale about the Fishes. Her answer? "But there are no fishes!!" (the surf and coastline part was currently showing). Then the surfers caught her fancy -- and for the rest of the show she kept asking, where are the men, where did they swim, whether they swam home and so on. It's interesting that spectacle wearing Monterey Aquarium scientists in white smocks did not qualify as men -- she seems to have formed her idea of a male.

With the summer solstice, a few hot days arrived, and finally some use for our pool again. We are getting ready to take the complete pack into the mountain wilderness, but that's a topic for the next journal.

миру мир

literally "peace for the world", a Soviet slogan used during their occupation of our country of origin. It means something in the direction of solving all problems of violence in the world by subjecting all people and countries to Soviet supervision and control. It seems to have survived the fall of the Empire...

Copyright © 2007 by Carol & Sid Paral. All rights reserved.