The Matron Goes to Boot Camp -- Wait, She Means the Letterman Show

Win tickets to the David Letterman show?

Uh, sorta like the 'go to jail' card in Monopoly. Please, Letterman spies with software throughout the internet, don't get her wrong. She loves Dave. Adores the show. Regular viewer and all that.

But the thing that surprised the Matron was the mechanistic, complex machinery that indoctrinates and ushers in the audience.

First, you must come forty-five minutes before you actually really DO show up. That first fake sign-up also involves showing your driver's license 78 times to 33 people. This takes about 20 minutes. Then they tell you to go away, but come back in 45 minutes.

One of the main things the audience learns in that first non-session is that there are NO BATHROOMS available.

Every middle-aged mother in the room gasped out loud. Some of us held each other -- total strangers -- in shock and for support.

When you come back 45 minutes later, you are the recipient of a long list of instructions (while standing in numerical order for half an hour in 90 degrees), that included a warning away from high pitched sounds like "WOOOO" or lamenting sounds like "AW." We were also schooled in how to laugh and when - and at what velocity.

Funny Guy Laying Out the Rules: "People incapable of following these really complicated instructions will be removed from the audience. We'll drag you out, manhandle, and toss you in the street."

Ha-ha. The jokes are David's job, honey.

Once inside, the audience is consistently, thoroughly oiled to be 'on.' There is a LOT of hand-clapping and enthusiastic leadership from ushers (some really boogie with the hand-clapping). By hand-clapping, the Matron means to the beat of whatever music is roaring through the auditorium, whether it's the band (also amazing) or the piped in stuff.

On this second, more real trip, the audience learns that people who genuinely can't go two hours without a bathroom, may sit in the balcony. A stampede of middle-aged mothers moved to that line (not the Matron as she was thoroughly dehydrated per earlier instructions).

But during the show --which was amazing and Dolly Parton was the guest and artist --- at each commercial break, ushers descended like SWAT team members into the audience.

Usher: "YOU. AND YOU. YOU THERE IN THE RED, TOO."

And these people were removed.

Other ushers quickly sat in the vacated seats. The Ed Sullivan Theater is always 100% full during the Letterman show, folks. At the NEXT commercial, the humiliated rule-breakers were returned and a new batch of violators removed and replaced with even more ushers.

This is quite the payroll.

John to Matron: "Mary? What are they doing?"

Matron: "OMIGOD. No talking! We'll be dragged out and water-boarded next."

When the show ended--within TWO SECONDS--ushers pretty much screamed: "Get out!"

Well, then.

The Matron took notes. If only her household could run that way. Plus, a temporary replacement child when one goes bad? Ah, heaven.