Anything You Can Do

Yesterday I got a message from a friend who reads my weekly stories wondering if I had quit writing since I have missed a couple of weeks.
No, I haven't given up on writing it has just been a busy, crazy month and writing takes some concentration and time. All my time and concentration was used for the Ardmore Little Theater's production of "Annie Get Your Gun".

Quite by accident or maybe fate two years ago I met a girl who was involved with the theater who kept telling me I needed to audition for their production of "Mary Poppins".  Wow! That was a flashback to high school when I was in a musical which led me to want to be a star on Broadway. Off to college to major in theater but was scared off in less than a week by the drama queens and their level of talent.  My major changed with lightening speed. But now, fifty-five years later, I am having fun doing what I wanted to do. It's not Broadway and I am certainly not a star, but still fun.

This blog, as they are called, is not just about the theater but more about some observations and thoughts that pop up spending a great deal of time in a large group of people.  The cast of about forty people ranges in age from a few not old enough to drive to one actually older than I am. Each one has their own reason for being in the cast.  Some, the college age theater majors, because they want to make it a career and some, us older ones may be reliving past desires or it is just something fun to do. 

I am there because anytime I found a stage I have had the desire to get on it. One of my favorite songs from the play is "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better".  Perhaps I have gone through life with the motto "anything you can do, I can do" - skip the "better part" - most things I am merely capable at best.  I often wonder and also think that life may have been a little easier if I did not have some inborn desire to always learn something new or try to do things I saw others doing. Then I think no since life could not be as much fun if I just let things pass me by.

When I started writing my blog/stories I titled them  "I Should Have Known" in hopes that they would explain some of the dumb situations I got myself into through the years.  The more I wrote the more I realized that maybe the fact that I was a Baby Boomer had a lot to do with a freedom to create ways to have fun and learn.  My younger brother and I put on Little Rascal  type shows on the driveway for the neighbor kids, we got books from the Library and I taught myself to sew at the age of seven, girls cooked back them and I could whip up dinner by the age of ten, there were piano and dancing lessons and roller skating lessons at twelve that resulted in being in two skating shows.

At the age of fourteen I helped my twelve year old brother build a street rod.  He read Hot Rod Magazine, explained it all to me, we built it and Mother took it out for test runs since we were too young to drive.  Boys liked me because I could talk hot rod talk and that gave me a basis for years of drag racing and a team uniform business. In what I call the hilarious years being a single Mom auto mechanics came in handy when I had to do a brake job or change a tire because I could not afford to pay someone to do it. Those were the days when I bought a car for a $100.00 in 1990.  It was a 1965 four-door faded red Dodge that did wonderful things like have the entire exhaust system fall off on the road, or the shifting linkage messed up and you had to open up the hood to fix it or that my design clients in their expensive houses liked because I had reasonable prices. My son and I had more fun in that car than anything else I ever owned.

The sewing came in handy when I needed a dress for a formal dinner or drapes for the house. That turned into a thirty year career as a interior designer for which I did all my own work cause I certainly wasn't going to pay someone else to make drapes, cornice boards, upholstery, paint, wallpaper or make a little boy's room look like a castle.  Then there was deciding to learn to ice skate a forty years of age.  During the second lesson when I could stand on them and stop I signed up to be in the largest amateur ice show in the country.  Of course everyone had to make their own costumes and I learned how to bead and sequin and got very good on the skates.  

There were many other adventures and enterprises through the years.  Marshell and I owned an Opry that became a very unique blues venue, a diner, restored two buildings turning them into homes and lots of musical instruments. Sure there were bad times, good times and some downright hilarious times but the bad disappeared quickly as there are too many great times to be had.

I didn't write this to brag or make myself look sane in any way.  I just get a little sad seeing people spending their time trying to get a life from that phone everyone carries around and looks at even in between scenes of the play. Put it away, take a class and learn something new or try talking to the people around you. If there is always something you wanted to do just go do it. 

Life is short and it seems to go very quickly the older you get. Don't blame others for your bad decisions or errors in judgment and realize you are the only one who is going to make you happy. I have always believed that sleeping is over rated and it wastes so much time when you could be having fun or being constructive. Stop with the "old" sayings like forgetting things since the marvelous thing is that the busier or the more active you are the more you remember.  Laugh a lot, have lots of pets, call people instead of texting and always remember material things don't really mean anything, especially happiness.

I have told my kids that if I die tomorrow they should only remember that I had a heck of a good time! (Although I plan on hanging around quite a bit longer as there are still to many things I want to do.)