A night to remember... The Twelfth Night to be exact

The night began frantically trying to prepare myself for an evening of uncomfortable sleeplessness in the great outdoors of New York City. My mom told me I needed the following: Bug spray and Melatonin. Unfortunately the grocery store had neither. In fact, when I asked for Melatonin the man offered me pepto bismol...Which is actually not even remotely close to a natural sleeping agent. So no thanks. So in replace of mother's wise recommendations I brought a "crackling firewood" scented candle to set the mood, and my baby blanket. All set.

We arrived at Central Park around 11 o'clock PM on Thursday night. And to my surprise we were not the only ones there. in fact, more than a few people had arrived with the same idea a couple hours prior. That was just unnecessary of them. Our timing was perfect.
As we were setting up shop we got to know the strangers we would be sleeping with. They were pretty cool. I liked our little group of crazy people...
Then we found out that we were actually not in the right place...not the right place at all... In fact, if we were to stay in that place we would probably get arrested. This led to us having to make the walk of shame past the other line of people waiting out on the street. Central Park West and 81st to be exact. (But they didn't get to scream at Anne Hathaway on her way out of the theater... so there!)
We set up shop for the second time and we were ready to try out this whole sleeping on the street thing. So I lit my candle in hopes that it would keep creatures away and also to make me feel like I was camping... not just homeless. I think it did the trick.



I fell asleep pretty easily but the concrete isn't that comfortable believe it or not so the continuation of slumber was somewhat difficult... Darn pepto bismol.
The worst part of the night was when I woke up at 4 am desperately needing to use a restroom...I had to walk 3 avenues to find the nastiest McDonald's restroom I have ever seen. It was torture. And in my half conscious state I started to understand why homeless people practice public urination.
The next morning when the girls found out about my lonely wanderings they were not too thrilled . I believe Lizzie said something like, "New rule... Buddy system. oh wait, that is not a new rule."
But good news- we all survived. No creatures. No robberies. My candle didn't even burn out.
At 6 am the line regulations began and they herded us like cattle. At this point the line went from 81st street up into the ninety's. Out of control people. Out of control. Since we were near the front of the line we got to sit and watch the parade of the less fortunate...which was entertaining but sad. They sent 600 people home at 6 in the morning. Everyone that came at 4 AM and later didn't make it early enough. Did I mention they don't even give out the tickets until 1:00 PM!!!


Moving on... we set up shop for a 3rd time and from 6 AM until 1 PM we talked, laughed, played games, snacked, cat napped and Angie took an obnoxious amount of pictures. We had a good time.

We had to make a sign telling people what time we got there because everyone that walked passed us wanted to know how early we had arrived to achieve such a spot of perfection in line...The bragging got old- so the sign did the trick. People also wanted to tell us their sob stories in hopes of us giving them extra tickets... Guess what people, I slept on the street. I don't feel bad for you.

The time came and we got our tickets, said goodbyes to our line buddies, packed up the goods and went home.


Was it worth it? The play was awesome, and funny and entertaining... But I wouldn't do it again for the tickets because the entire show I was dreaming of being in bed... or even on the street sleeping. But I would definitely do it again just for the spontaneous fun we had. It was a long but unforgettable 14 hours.
And it took me 2 days to recover from that party.