Drama

(Two and half years ago, I wrote...)

Friday night I went to a show on Cap Hill with my dear friends Basil and Emily. The show didn't even go on until 11 and not wanting another incident where I go home before the band even plays, I drank some tea. Because i also didn't want to be up too much past the band playing.

We went and got drinks at the Wild Rose before and after the show. We danced and in general had a great time, although i will admit that there was a moment in the night where I thought, "Oh no! I'm missing my evening vitamin!"

And since only other people in the evening of their 20's seem to want to hear about how strange it is to get older, i've decided to shift gears and write about drama. I wish I was writing about being in the kind of glee club as seen on Glee but we didn't have glee. We had swing choir where we had black skirts and white button down shirts with the biggest yellow cumberbun you have ever seen. I've seen skirts smaller. You could have swaddled the baby Jesus in this thing. And maybe even a skinny wiseman--definitely not a rotund wiseman, that would just be ridiculous. But we did have drama which meant two different acitivites, the One Act play in the fall, where we competed. And a big play in the spring where we performed a couple nights as a dinner theater as well as an afternoon performance to the whole school.

I was in my first one act play in 8th grade when Mr. T was the director. Although it was supposed to be for high schoolers only, I was allowed in because they needed someone else. We performed an all girl play because, well, we had no boys. It was about a weird old lady who long ago had played hide and seek with her twin who hid in a trunk....and then was never found. But the sister is sort of crazy because maybe she knew or something, I forget how it all went down but I played the dead sister and i had to dress like a child and talk both sweetly and scary at the same time. I don't think i did a very good job but i don't think I had to. I mean a jr high kid in children's clothes jumping out from behind a trunk is scary no matter what her voice sounds like. I didn't have a lot of lines, in fact I might have had only one---"Hello Hannah."

(the end)

[I'm not sure why I didn't finish this or where I was going, but I wish I did! Sometimes reading my past writing is a little annoying. I almost always think, AND THEN WHAT?! What were you thinking when you wrote this? Who were you? Who are you? Agh! It's a little creepy. ]

I was just thinking the other day about a speech competition I was in when I was probably a sophomore or so. I don't even remember the categories but for some reason someone told me to enter in the category where you're given a side of a controversial topic and then you look through a bunch of research materials (no computers) and then come up with a speech. I thought this sounded like a piece of cake. I absolutely love this hubris of mine that is not only attracted to difficult tasks but thinks, with so little self-doubt, that I can do it. Nay, excel at it.

Well, I did not excel at it. I didn't even come close to excelling. I wrote some ideas down, wrote a couple quotes and then figured I could just wing it. I knew how I was going to start and that was it. Everything beyond that was a blank page of optimism.

I started out strong what with that first sentence already in the wraps. And then things just puttered and died upon my lips. My optimism crashed in front of about 4 other competitors and a really nice judge. It was bad. I mean bad. I said that first sentence. Repeated it. Read my quotes. Repeated my first sentence. And then finished with "that's all I got!" The judge was super helpful and sweet. Everyone else had the decency to avoid eye contact.

Hubris: where optimism goes to die.