By Susan L. Harper
It was a beautiful day on a recent Saturday. I did my usual routine: take my 5-year-old girl and 18-month-old boy to the kids club at my exercise class, shuffle my daughter to her gymnastics class and then have lunch.
“Kids” I announced in a happy voice, “we are going somewhere special today!” I whip out a picture of Elmo and my daughter screams out “Yeah, we’re going to the ‘Sesame Street’ show!”
I’m a securities attorney who deals mostly with customer and intra-industry disputes. While I don’t deal in any of securitized mortgage matters, after the domino-like collapse of the Wall Street firms, all I wanted to do were rest and get my mind off of, as my colleague aptly put it, “the week that was.”
Next on deck was our 5:30 p.m. performance of “Elmo’s Green Thumb,” three tickets, just the kids and me.
I was running late and cursing myself for it when I pulled into the stadium parking lot at 5:20 p.m. There was no line to get a spot.
“Where are all of the people?” I said to the attendant.
“You know, it’s kind of slow today,” she responded sweetly but half-heartedly.
“Yeah.” I replied. My internal radar instantly popped up as I pulled into a first row parking space with barely any cars around me.
Only two of the 13 lower level sections in the Meadowlands arena were three-quarters filled. The rest had a smattering of people sprinkled throughout a row or two. Even the coveted floor seating was not filled; several back rows were empty.
At that moment I realized that my escape to the sunny days of Sesame Street would not allow me to hide from the cloudy days of Wall Street. I sat there no longer focusing on Cookie Monster and Elmo; my pre-show childhood excitement abruptly disappeared. I kept looking around, counting the empty sections, and worried. I thought about the tanking American economy, how we got here and the hundreds of empty chairs surrounding me, a physical testament of where we stand today.
“Oh, that’s not fair!” my daughter, says pointing down to the kids in floor seating. “Those kids [in floor seating] get to be close to Big Bird and Elmo, not fair.”
I turned to my daughter and in a calm, yet serious, voice said, “Look around and see how many empty seats there are? There are probably lots of mommies and daddies not working so they can’t take their kids to Sesame. Okay?”
“Yes, Mommy,” my daughter replies in a soft and almost shameful tone.
Intermission.
A guy comes out to the floor seating area holding an enormous amount of Elmo balloons. My eyes study the room; there were probably more balloons than there were people in attendance and of the people there, the takers were few.
Let’s go walk around I said to the kids.
No lines in the ladies room.
No lines for hotdogs or soda or ice cream either.
Barely any traffic in the hallway; I let my 18-month-old cut loose and run around without incident.
Workers were standing around with not much to do.
We walk back to our section. I ask the attendant about the low turnout. Is it just the show time I picked? Was it like this at the earlier show? Usually two or three sections are not filled at these shows, but now virtually all were empty.
She looks at me and says matter of factly, “ohhhh…hmmm… the earlier one was a little less.”
Yes, you read that correctly. “A little less.”
Ugh.
“The fundamentals of our economy are still strong,” John McCain declared on Black Monday.
“He meant the workers,” Sarah Palin defended.
“They got what they deserved,” an angry neighbor said to me earlier, referring to Wall Street’s collapse.
“Not even the smartest among us understand what these collateral instruments are about,” said a well-known CNN commentator.
“It’s the failed policies of eight years of the Bush administration,” declare the Democrats.
I couldn’t help but think about a “Mad TV” parody sketch of “Sesame Street” when big bird loses his house in a foreclosure, becomes homeless and can’t find his way back to Sesame Street. At the time it was hilarious.
And, now as I looked out at all of those empty chairs, thinking of the many times I’ve attended events here and witnessed the irrational exuberance of parents dropping large sums of money on cheap Chinese made goods that probably cost a $1 to make and paying $15 for an Elmo light or $10 for a balloon -– I wonder, not only how, but will we ever get back to Sesame Street too?
We go to the parking lot. A lady in the car parked next to mine is struggling to get her son into his car seat.
I turn to her and say, “Did you notice?”
“What do you mean?” she replies. “That there were no people there?”
“Yeah, that it was empty,” I say back to her while quickly glancing at my car to make sure the windows are closed so that my daughter doesn’t hear Mommy’s concern.
“Scary” she replied back.
“Real scary.” We locked eyes, gave the proverbial nod and smile, and then quickly departed.
I was planning to take the kids out to a restaurant afterwards.
Leftovers sounded better.
Susan L. Harper is an attorney in Lower Manhattan. Her email is SharperNY@aol.com.
