Parenting & Family Quote by Cathy Rigby

Rigby’s line sells nostalgia without admitting it’s a sales pitch. “A visit to the fountain of youth” is a classic fantasy, but she smartly reroutes it through a very 20th-century American ritual: taking your kids to a show and hoping the night does more than entertain. The phrasing isn’t about literal youth; it’s about permission. Parents get to act younger without looking pathetic, because they’re doing it “for the children.” Kids, meanwhile, get to feel grown-up by sharing an experience coded as special, live, and communal.

As an athlete-turned-performer, Rigby understands spectacle as a kind of embodied time travel. Sports and theater both hinge on presence: you’re in the room, your attention is captured, your body responds. The “fountain” metaphor flatters the audience’s desire to be restored - not just to earlier ages, but to earlier versions of family life: less distracted, more synchronized, everyone laughing at the same moment. That’s the subtext: the show isn’t merely content; it’s a temporary truce with modern fragmentation.

The context is family entertainment marketing that needs to justify itself against screens and schedules. By pairing “parents and the children,” Rigby removes the usual tug-of-war between adult taste and kid taste. She promises a rare overlap: a shared reboot. It’s aspirational, slightly corny, and effective because it frames buying a ticket as an investment in togetherness - with the bonus illusion that time, for once, is on your side.