But What Was I Thinking

The interesting thing about writing for me is that I really have to be in the right mood or the moon has to be in the right place or some current event can't overshadow the track I try to stay on.  It must have been some summer since my last post about high school was on June the 30th. Someday I may actually finish telling stories about my senior year in high school.

We all have, or at least I hope every one has had, those times when you look back at something you did and wonder what in the world you were thinking. I only confess some of this stuff so that you can laugh
about some of the really dumb things I did so you don't feel bad about about your goof-ups.  Isn't that thoughtful of me?  I still sort of cringe at the thought that I actually ran for Miss Muskogee.

There is a good chance I could have put this dumb stunt completely out of my memory if I had not hoarded every bit of memorabilia I could save from the time I was born up to this date. Most of it stayed boxed up through twenty-seven moves until I got tired of looking at boxes and unpacked all of them when we moved here. Being slightly OCD every thing is neatly organized.  One never knows when you might need your high school English compositions, college Chemistry notes or your old divorce papers.

I am a little fuzzy about how I came about this brilliant decision to be Miss Muskogee.  I feel like it was my Mother, the same Mother who hated everything I got involved in, who suggested it.  I can not imagine myself even in my wildest imagination thinking I would end up on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City as a Miss America contestant so it had to be a Mother thing.  Maybe I wouldn't feel so bad about entering if they had begged for girls to enter so they could even have a Miss Muskogee contest.  Then I could say I only entered to help them out.  No.  I was the first one to enter.

Thank heavens there is a lot about the pageant I can not remember. I was hoping there was not a bathing suit competition until I looked at the program and discovered there was indeed a swimsuit competition. It must have been so bad I that I filed it back in the part of the brain labelled 'Never Open".  I was at that time a good twenty or twenty-five pounds heavier than I am now.  My Mother used to tell me I was not fat, just solid.  Now just what did that mean?  You don't describe Sumo wrestlers as solid so maybe it wasn't such a bad description. It was and still is a puzzling term I have never quite figured out.  At any rate, I still cannot see my self parading across the stage in a bathing suit......and high heels.

I do remember the DRESS.  I don't know where that dress came from and I can never remember wearing it again.  It was a good thing my parents did not take any pictures or it would be etched in the minds of other people instead of just mine.  Back in the day Seventeen Magazine and Ladies Home Journal had these pages that gave "dos and don'ts" for different figure types.  If you wanted to look slimmer you did not wear tight clothes or horizontal stripes.  Don't wear skirts below your knees if you wanted to look taller.  If you have a square shaped face you did not wear a square cut top and on and on.  I tried to abide by all the "dos" they preached.

Well, when you have a Mother who looked like she just stepped out of Vogue magazine in anything she put on it was a bad idea to allow her to take you shopping. The dress had a square cut neckline, fit tightly to the waist where it then joined a gathered shirt that was well below my knees but not floor length.  Add to that short puffy sleeves that resembled balloons in a medium brown satin.  To make matters even worse - brown is not a color I should ever wear since it makes me look like I died three days ago. Try not to picture me leaning against a piano singing some song now hidden in the "Never Open" file flat, off-key and out of tempo and you have my talent part of the competition.

Maybe the Evening Gown Competition went better. I think I wore the dress I wore to the Senior prom that year since it is the only long dress I can ever remember having during high school.  Needless to say I did not become Miss Muskogee.  Nor have I ever put being in the pageant on my resume.

I would really like to add here that I never had another time in my life when I asked myself "What were you thinking!"  Seems like in my last story I mentioned that in writing these stories I was beginning to see a pattern of behavior developing.  Sadly, this was only the first of many "What was I thinking" moments.  Next week will start out as one of those when I accepted a date to the prom.  You will have to see how that one turned out.

Anything Can Happen If You Let It

It is amazing how fast time flies especially when you are having fun.  I can't believe it has been a month since I wrote.  There were lots of good intentions but it seems like when I got involved in Mary Poppins a lot of things sort of got put on hold.  What an amazing experience it was.

Let's Go Fly A Kite

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Back in June I wrote a story about going to the auditions for Ardmore Little Theater's production of Mary Poppins. It had been many years since I had gone to actual auditions for anything, had never been to a production there and only knew one person who was going to try out. To top everything off I had only gotten permission from the orthopedist four days before that I no longer had to have my broken arm in a sling after twelve weeks. Actually since I did not have any music for the singing audition and my arm would only bend up and down at the elbow for the dance audition I decided to just go and see what it was all about.

It was a very strange feeling that swept over me watching other people audition. Memories of my first week of college sort of flooded back.  I had decided to major in theater and dance at college until I went to the classes the first week of school. I was attending an all-girl's college rather well known for it's theater and dance programs.  They actually had a summer stock theater and an awesome dance program.  My only problem was that "preppy" little me was overwhelmed by the multitude of beautiful girls in their leotards, capes and long flowing hair. After a week of agony my advisor suggested I switch to TV, Radio and Film Production.  That worked for me.

Somehow I managed to get through the Mary Poppins auditions and did get a call back and a place in the show.  Even managed to have two lines and as a member of the ensemble was in all the musical numbers.  I can't praise the cast, directors or the stage and set crews highly enough.  It is hard to believe that in thirty-eight days from auditions to opening Mary Poppins was a smash hit.  One gentleman told my husband, Marshell, that it was the very best musical production he had ever seen at the Ardmore theater.

Step In Time

Being "newbie" as I was called early on in the rehearsals was not always easy.  It was always hard to answer the questions about my theater resume which is pretty nonexistent since high school and college.  Also just a little difficult to realize that I was at least fifteen to twenty years older than anyone else in the cast. But I had spent a good thirty years writing and directing plays for children and organizing talent shows at my children's schools so they had the same opportunities that I had growing up.  Then there were years I spent with the Southfield, Michigan Ice Company.  If I could go from only being able to stop and start on ice skates when I got into the show to four years later joining a competitive Precision Ice Team, I could do this play.



A song from the play goes:
Anything can happen of you let it
If you reach for the stars all you get are the stars
But if you reach for the heavens, you get the start Stars thrown in

I sort of disagree with the "let it happen" idea.  No one involved with this show just "let" things happen. From the little boy who played Michael who could not even read the words in the script to begin with but delivered seven flawless performances to the college freshman who played Mary Poppins who was bruised and sore after two nights of "flying" practise in addition to her father being in a bad accident but never missed a rehearsal and was always perfect in every way.  They didn't let it happen, they made it happen.  

 The cast of fourty some people, the director who kept changing things to make the show perfect, the musical director who could teach anyone to sing with constructive and not hurtful words, the choreographer would could get dancers to go beyond their limits, the two costume ladies who kept their composure with constant problems, to the set guys who kept building and rebuilding the sets to make them work, to the sound and lighting crew that made the show sound and look great and to the stage manager who held everyone and every thing together none of these people "let" this play happen.  They all worked hard and MADE it happen.

Cast Of Mary Poppins

There is a Mary Poppins Facebook page where during the show we were all kept up to date on rehearsal times.  It has been changed to Mary Poppins Post-Show Blues Support Group. It is amazing how down everyone gets when a show you spent every waking minute working on or thinking about is suddenly over. People you spent so much time and laughter with have suddenly gone back to their before-the-show lives. So we all keep in touch and tell each other it is okay to wake up in the morning singing Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious or Step In Time and how to deal with what to do every evening now that there is no rehearsal to go to.

Bank Scene

I told one of the cast members that I had driven 2,509.7 miles to get to Ardmore for the auditions and the show.  She said that I could have taken a nice vacation driving all those miles. Maybe but it was actually a lot more fun making the drive singing at the top of my lungs (good practise) and being a part of Mary Poppins.

Lily and Ben with Mary Poppins