Apostrophe

"And just so you don't think this is a one-time occurrence, here's a brief list of some reasons why I kinda suck:

I wrecked my mother's car
I lost my cousin in a mall
I killed a fish and a plant and a squirrel
I lost my father's autographed Mickey Mantle ball
And rode my bike into a nine-year-old girl--
But she was okay
And I keep telling myself,

Oh, life goes on
Things will be okay.
Though the car and fish and ball and plant and squirrel are gone
Tomorrow's a brand-new day."

-- "Along the Way" from Pasek & Paul's new musical Edges

--

I've been living off of others for the last month. It's getting worse. Today, I ate nothing but what co-workers had brought to the office for "everyone" to eat. I suspect I'm the only one who's been sneaking cupcakes and pizza slices this week.

Someone thrust a can of sparkling water in my hand. I thought it was regular soda until I took a sip and there was no sweetness in it.

My boss insisted I eat a chicken tenderloin prepared by his wife, who is also my boss. "No thanks," I said. "I have four," he said. I ate the chicken with my fingers.

--

Blogger tells me I haven't updated in almost a month. It's been busy: teaching, rehearsing, movie watching. And I had been anticipating today as the busiest day of all--first day of auditions for The Children's Theatre, opening night for The Nerd--but out of nowhere, I have nothing really to do. For a solid hour. I've eaten. I've put up signs. I've updated lists, answered emails, even helped clean the rehearsal room. The silence is dubious: some undone task is lurking, somewhere.

--

The summer acting class, my main reason for staying in this area through August, was a little disappointing. Having missed the first week, I was lost for a while. I didn't know what the kids had been told and taught. And anyway, the structure was so different this year that I didn't get the chance to correct the mistakes I made last year.

Still, it was not all bad. The kids were great this year, talented, polite, malleable. We got some scenes worked into the final performance, which did not happen last year. Kids learned to juggle. We played improv games and started to see significant improvement. It was funny and fun. And while the sound of fifty tap shoes is still one of the most hideous noises I have known, I do think the camp was better this year.

--

One of the older kids sang a song called "Along the Way" from Pasek & Paul's Edges, which I quoted before. It's a great song, one I had never heard before, and I'm totally stealing it as an audition piece.

--

The night before their final Sunday matinee, I had a few drinks and grew very maudlin. I held some thank-you cards and had an apostrophe (the literary element whereby a character addresses an absent or abstracted audience).

I imagined telling the kids the next day that I would miss them. I said things like, "it has been an honor and a privilege and a blessing," and I got choked up. So I tried saying things like, "I hope you enjoyed our classes at least half as much as I did," and I chuckled because I sounded like Bilbo Baggins. Or, "you've all worked so hard," which sounded cheap. I looked at the thank-you note again. I said a lot more that night that was basically a jumbled-up version of things that sounded better in my head. It was hard to think about leaving, perhaps never to teach a group of kids like this again.

I decided it would be best for me not to say a word about it, to the kids at least. It was best.

--

Yesterday, I taught a workshop at a daycare thirty minutes away. This daycare is awfully run. I was in a room with a half-wall beyond which another class with a loud teacher made all sorts of distracting commotion. It's a residency workshop, too, so I'll have to do six more of these at the same place. We're supposed to put on a play by the end.

The teacher corralled them to me and I had them sit on the floor. I rose to introduce myself and one of the kids, a little buzz-cut'd punk wearing a camouflage jacket in August, proclaimed, "It's Jackie Chan!"

--

Life goes on.