Memories

In the past couple of days one of the people on Facebook has been posting old pictures of herself and her friends from her days when she was involved in a magical place called Theatre 300. It was a magical place too, because they took this dreary looking black box set up and transformed it unto the strangest most wonderful things, from country settings for "Oklahoma" to a courtroom for the play "Nuts" to a rather unusual setting for a wonderful play called "Spoon River Anthology". Although I'm sure most of these kids would recall that I yelled and bitched a lot about what they did to my poor floors and walls, I always was amazed at the transformation.
I also was amazed, and to be perfectly honest, very proud of these kids. Not only did they work their tails off learning all their lines and places and such, they also worked their butts off building each and every set and helping to hang the spotlights. All of their hard work and dedication to their craft did not go unnoticed by the "old" guy grumbling about the mess. Since I suffer from severe stage fright I envied them their abilities. They did actually get me (finally) into a play, but I only had one line (thank God) and even that did not go as planned. The first time I had to be sarcastic with the light person because they were too bust watching me and didn't do their job at the right time but also I wasn't loud enough. Before the second time I did the show I had to practice with one of the other actors so that I could properly yell so that the entire audience could hear my one line. Poor me. The person they chose to help me was someone I was incredibly fond of and yelling at them was not something I wanted to do lol
It's funny, but at the time I was the "zookeeper" for this group I knew more about all of these people than I knew about my own children. About the only thing that was true for both groups is that they could come to me with any problem they had and get some sound advice without being criticized. And, I'm pleased to say that some of them did. I hope I gave them good advice and didn't do any damage to their egos. Theatre people do have some big egos :)
Then, of course, there was one very special young lady that I was so smitten with that it almost destroyed my marriage. I was a fool in love, too bad it wasn't returned. She loved me, she said, like a brother. Ther's no fool like an old fool. I recall at a party once someone put on the Hall and Oates song, Maneater and said they were playing it for me. Whenever I hear that song now I still think of that young lady.
Today marks the day that the wonderful leader of that group retires from education. He and his partner will be moving to New York City sometime soon and I wish them the very best of luck. Congratulations on surviving a system that can eat you alive if you're not careful. Congratulations on surviving the pain in the ass you had to deal with as a custodian. And here's a tidbit you probably never knew. Your kids never built a set that I did not crawl over and jump up and down on to ensure that it was safe. I did not want anything bad to happen to any of my "animals". Also, I cried at every play I ever attended die to sheer pride in a job well done.