Drama

"so much there to see
inside of a week they came looking for something
new try to press it flat inside of a few days..."

-- "The Earth Pressed Flat," by 10,000 Maniacs

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Someone should have told them that sitting on laps at the first meeting does not make for a great first impression, nor does wearing lime green. Someone should have told them lots of things.

Alas. The one thing they've been told over and over for almost two decades of life is, "You're gonna be a star."

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The summer camp began yesterday and continues today through several weeks. Taught my first "drama class," cropped by morning auditions running late. Most of the instructors are fierce, so I gave my class some fun, drilled zaniness. I just can't become Campbell, the cool teacher in high school, who grasped lightly and let the ropes slip easy, who patronized curriculum and decorum and other -um's, who swaggered down the hall with a train of smart rebel types like a moving barricade, whose vain grip tightened in spring when finals and reviews drew near like a drop-off, who ultimately lost control of the large group who loved him.

Time to twist the screws today, then.

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I was the only instructor in jeans, a dress shirt and a suit jacket. I felt like a tool.

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Recalled high school, too. Those who lived through it always talk about how awful it was, but the talk is touched with nostalgia. These kids don't know, they just don't know, and it's our job to remember what it was like not to know and think you did, and break that wall from the other side. We are locks trying to be doors.