Along came Ludwig

On Tuesday, the Shakespeare Workshop class went to see Hamlet at the Indiana Repertory Theater in beautiful downtown Indianapolis. It was an amazing production which I personally enjoyed very much, but I'll devote a little more time to that later. I hope. My blog-writing has seriously slacked off since our new year of homeschooling has started, which I kind of figured would happen, but oh well.

Anyway, after the play, my friend Michelle and I and Meelyn and Aisling and Michelle's two daughters decided to have some lunch on Monument Circle at one of the many cute restaurants there. We chose Quizno's, which is a place where the girls and I eat frequently, but for some reason it just looked better in Indianapolis than it does in our city.

So the six of us were walking cheerfully to Quizno's, when suddenly, we were approached by a main in a blue tailcoat and knee-length breeches with white stockings. He was wearing a white wig of insane looking hair and I at once identified him as our dear friend, Ludwig.

"'Allo!" he said in a passable German accent, with an air of bonhomie that I associate more with our dear friend, Wolfgang, than with the notoriously curmudgeonly Beethoven. "Guten tag! I vant to inwite you to come to hear my moosik!"

I absolutely love people in period costumes. I can't help myself. There's something in me that has to speak to them as if they're really the character they're portraying. I have this strange compulsion, even if I know good and well that the Goofy costume is inhabited by a surly college student who is silently telling me to go somewhere very hot, and I'm not talking about Orlando. "Oooh!" I said, "I love your music!"

He bowed gallantly. "Danke schoen! Thank you! Vould you like to come listen to my moosik on zis Friday in ze eeffening? You vould like zat, ja? It vill be my Ninth Symphony, the one zat I left unfinished at my death."

"I'd love it!" I said. Michelle, cheerful and game as always, said, "Me too!" The four girls just stood there, looking at Herr Beethoven with deep suspicion, obviously recalling all the times their mothers had warned them to never speak to strangers on the street. If Beethoven had offered us candy, a quarter or a ride in his car, Michelle and I might have conceivably gone right along with him, while our daughters stood by, irritably writing down a description of him and possibly his license plate number.

I took a picture of all the girls posing with him and Aisling poked me and hissed. "How could you do that to me?"

"Do what?" I asked. "That was fun! You don't see Beethoven walking the streets of our city, do you?"

"That wasn't really Beethoven," she said witheringly.

"Yes, I know," I said. "First of all, because I can distinguish between fantasy and reality, and second of all, because everyone knows that Beethoven was DEAF. Helllllloooo?"