Performing

I can't sing. I can't act. I'm not being self-deprecating or modest, just a fairly honest assessment of my talents (skillset includes: math - good, writing - fair, strength and flexibility - above average). But this weekend full of nostalgia has reminded me of this moment - Seth and Ken asked me to be stage manager for Into the Woods. Then they asked me to do a 60 second walk-on toward the very end of the play as Sleeping Beauty. To me, this was both huge and terrifying (in retrospect it seems neither; they were in need of an extra and I was conveniently there every night anyway and already knew the play). During tech week, after a few rehearsals of my 'big entrance' (with Mike, on whom I had a raging crush, and who was enough of a veteran to make jokes backstage until the absolute last second, and kept threatening to spank me on stage; which, of course, added to my general nervousness)...anyway, where was I? Oh, right. So, one night, at some obscene hour, we're working something out, clowning around on stage, and Christine looks at me and smiles. What? I say. You've got it, she replies. Huh? It. The taste for it. An audience. Performance.

I haven't thought about this in ages, but it's true. It's cliche, but it's a total drug, and one I've been comfortable with, pretty much since I could stand upright. Gymnastics competitions were pretty much all about everyone staring at you, and dance and theater afterward were a continuation of that. And now that I think about it, so is teaching. Keeping kids awake at 8am while talking about statistics - that definitely requires a non-trivial level of entertainment.

Anyway, I'm tipsy for the first time in what feels like forever (but what realistically is probably only a month or so) and as I tipped over onto my bed and was tempted to just fall asleep fully clothed with the lights and tv on I remembered that night that AWB and I stumbled home and I literally fell asleep on top of her, mid-conversation, on our couch in the living room. Why I thought of that and not the myriad of other times I've come home drunk in the past three years here in atlanta I don't know, but I've been fiercely nostalgic for weeks now, so we'll go with it.