If All The World’s Indeed A Stage, Where Are The Dressing Rooms Again?

            Yes, dear sweet, voluminous, voluptuous reader, I have once again decided to peer into the murky depths of my factual inaccuracies and reveal even more of my downright illustriously fabricated stagebound past.  I am retreading the boards so to speak to use a phrase per se and together we shall all grow as people, as carbon based lifeforms, and as expert salesmen of vinyl all-weather siding.  Well, perhaps I have exaggerated.  We are definitely made up of more than just carbon.

             Given the figurative volumes that have attempted to compile my vast stage background, I have once again decided to take everyone on a Poseidon Adventure of sorts into the Towering Inferno of my past heights and down through on a Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea of my past depths so that the Swarm of memories can overtake each of us up until the moment When Time Ran Out.  Yes, through these memories we can all get Beyond the Poseidon Adventure of my past stage experiences.  Now if all of those Irwin Allen references aren’t enough of a clue that I don’t know what I’m talking about, then I don’t know anything about The Story of Mankind. 

            The year was 1988 and my parents, determined to scar my fragile emotional make-up decided to move from the “City of Brotherly Love” also known as Milwaukee, WI to the “Biggest Moderately-Apportioned City in the World of Washington County”, also known as Hartford, WI.  Hartford is of course known for three things: 1) W.B. Place, where you can tan your hides, 2) The Mineshaft restaurant and bar, where you can hide your tans, and 3) the ability to cruelly disprove the comedy rule of threes.

             My new school was Peace Lutheran School and upon entering 5^th grade there, the only thought I had was fixating on escaping back to my old life.  This was going to prove difficult as I didn’t know even rudimentary German.  My brother’s ability to make a fake passport for me proved to be a dead-end as he was more interested in beating Super Mario Brothers.  Lightbulbs for my tunnel proved to be difficult to smuggle out past my eagle-eyed father in mass quantities.  My parents, showering me with love and concern probably in an effort to distract me in my efforts, had shown themselves to be more than worthy opponents.  I was broken, dejected, and despondent.  In a word that I created through my distraughtness, I was disconsolable.

            Despite the world weighing my little ten year old shoulders down, I could take comfort in a tiny glimmer of hope.  One infinitesimal light in the gloomy darkness could lead me out of this doom and gloom.  Peace Lutheran happened to have some really cute girls in attendance.  Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Man, does this guy drone on in a shallow and sad way!”  However I would counter with the clever bon mot of “Oh, you think so?!  Well, you ain’t read nothing yet!”

             Now what in the name of all that is moderately sacred has any of this to do with relaying      my past stage experience?  I’m glad that someone like me had the nerve to ask myself this very question that I asked moi.  What draws people to the stage?  Is it the passion for acting? Maybe.  Is it the drive to portray wonderful well-written characters?  Eh, sure.  Is it the wanting to become rich and famous?  I think this is closer to the mark.  Is it to meet ladies?  Yes.  There I said it.  Yes, this is the reason to act.  “But wouldn’t being a football player be a better route to gaining the attention of toothsome lasses?” you might assuredly inquire.  Sure, if you have a modicum of athletic ability.  But the gridiron attracts the manliest of male men and the stage, well, doesn’t.  For someone like me, who is enchanted with the concept of being surrounded by ladies without any testosterone laden buffoons in shoulder pads to compete with, the stage is a perfect setting!  Sure in a locker room I wouldn’t get a second glance from the opposite sex.  But when I’m surrounded by other guys that can best be described as “noodly drama nerds”, I am a demigod by comparison.

            Now did this ever help me achieve a legendary reputation with the lovely ladies of the stage?  I can answer with a clever and resounding “Nope!”  Oh sure I gave some wonderful backrubs to some very lovely shoulders indeed, but most if not all of those ladies did in the end enjoy the company of those linebackers who ultimately thought that Shakespeare was something you drank and Molière was something you had a dermatologist examine.

            Ah but this bitterness was the result of future dramatic enterprises on the stage, not necessarily whilst in my remaining halcyon grade school years.  In fact from fifth through eighth grade I never was in a school production.  Oh sure there were many offers from all throughout the extensive Lutheran parochial grade school drama circuits for me to return, but I declined all offers, imagined or fictional.  Why this vacancy of my presence from the stage?  I like to think that as I was being mandatorily encouraged to take up a musical instrument by my parents, my dedication to being a mediocre at best saxophone player was my driving, albeit at slow to moderate speed, focus at the time.  However, upon some research I discovered that this was hopelessly inaccurate and in fact libelous to me, whom I didn’t want to sue in the first place.  Upon further review I believe that laziness combined with apathy made a wonderful cocktail that I downed liberally at the time and this was in fact the reason.

            Yet I was in two forensics competitions at the time of 7^th and 8^th grade however, so my instincts remained sharpened by that experience.  In 7^th grade, I handpicked a fellow student to give me straight lines as I delivered an Abbott and Costello routine that I had transcribed from a worn cassette tape.  This of course is shocking to most readers that will grudgingly admit that I am their acquaintance.  I of course have incredible disdain for Bud & Lou.  Sure, there are some funny moments in Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein and Who’s On First is a routine that if performed correctly shows that you have incredible comic timing.  But beyond that, I have always viewed them as lower rung Three Stooges mimics that appeal to the lowest common denominator, which is why their films made money as brighter talents such as W.C. Fields and the Marx Brothers withered and died, but not that I’m bitterly angry about that.

            I had heard this routine on tape many times and as it wasn’t Who’s On First and as I knew it more or less from memory already, I could dazzle the judges and blow away the competition at the Lutheran grade school forensics meet with my mad verbiage skills.  I handpicked my straight man Jeff from a literal crowd of 4 other guys in my class and after a smidgen of rehearsal and a practice run in front of the class, we went into the throng of competitors a few weeks later.

            I don’t know if you’ve ever had what some would call the agony of having to sit through a classroom filled with grade school forensics presentations, but allow me to dissuade your fears and apprehension and tell you the truth.  It is appalling in its badly applied mediocrity.  Ye gods.  Oh sure, the parents were gleaming with pride for their little moppets that were all most certainly going to be the next lighting stand-in for the next Haley Joel Osment, but for the rest of us it was a trial by badly memorized fire.

            However, I knew that we were going to amaze with our shocking maturity and comic timing.  So the moment had come and we proceeded to go through the routine, beat for beat, laugh for laugh.  We followed the same technique that Bud & Lou had and knew where the laughs were and it all fell into place.  I thought we had a lock for a first place blue ribbon of achievement and wonder.  And then the judges came back with their results and the red ribbon of a second place, the first place for failures, was handed to us.  I was stunned.  My ego is not that terrific to begin with but I thought we were a lock.  When I asked a judge what we could have done differently, she said “It was just great and funny but then you swore, so I had to dock you.”

            What?  I swore?!  When was that?  She said that it was when I said someone did something just for the “hell of it”.  I then reminded her that as the entire performed piece is a collection of bad fish puns and fish-related jokes, I actually and truthfully did say the person in question just did it for the halibut.  HALIBUT!  A bad fish pun.  Not a cuss, mild as it would have been IF I actually said it.  So we weren’t being graded on performance but on single misheard pun?  Alas, she couldn’t be swayed and as this was being held at a Lutheran grade school forensics competition at a Lutheran high school, the self-righteous nonsense from the religiously indignant cloth-eared buffoon judges held firm. 

           (Not that I’m still bitter, mind you.  I’ve come to realize that the level of humor needed to amuse most Lutherans hovers somewhere between an off-color joke from the late 1700s about Catholics and the mid-1990s masterworks of Sir Adam Sandler.  Sadly even Abbott and Costello must be Bollinger compared to the stale Bud Light of Mike & Molly they’re used to imbibing.)

Did this setback set me back?  Not at all!  For I knew I would be back that next year and perform yet again.  I most certainly would show them and go out in a blaze of glory that would rival anything that Jon Bon Jovi sang about Emilio Estevez playing a cowboy.  But that is another story that I need time to enhance with dramatic fiction.  You’re welcome as always and stay tuned for the thrilling penultimate conclusion!