How truth travels

I recently had the opportunity to go to a local night of theater. Now I could comment on how the actual start time was entirely unknown (and we discovered that they were getting going when we heard the music blaring across town from the stadium). Or I could comment on how I felt like I was on the old end of the age spectrum there, the event having drawn the teen crowd out. But what really caught my attention was the content of the skits presented.

The skits were full of exaggeration and catch phrases (which I now hear all over town), but the content was rather serious. The first skit was presented as showing the importance of education and the power of a good mother. So we have a kid who wants to study and a father who doesn't see it as important. The mother circumvents the father's declarations that the kid doesn't need to study by secretly sending the kid to school. Then the father runs into a situation where he needs to be able to read. He comes back and declares that education is important and personally takes his kid to register for school.

Lesson learned? Fathers can be capricious. Education is important. The mother is always right.

The second skit was set on the French island. A family is there illegally and they face various problems. They're scared to go out because the immigration police might find them and send them home. They're scared to go out because there are bands of youth robbing people and beating them up. One day the girl goes out and is attacked, robbed, and comes home upset. Her father doesn't believe her story about what happened, declaring that "if only she'd been properly dressed" it wouldn't have happened.Well, a few days later he goes out and is attacked, robbed, beaten up, and learns his lesson.

Lesson learned? Life on the French island isn't as great as it seems it should be. Just because you haven't seen it doesn't make it true.

I don't know that those are the skits that I would have put on, but they caught the audience's attention and kept them out until long after midnight (I went home early and got a summary of the last skit from a friend).