It is hard being an actor in West Texas especially when you are typecast and working with limited parts. I always wanted to be the main star, you know, the princess, the ghost, the wildly deranged witch. But I never got those good, juicy roles. They always went to the more princess-type girl than what I was. Instead, I got to be the mother, the queen, the maid, the Edith Ann, basically anything dowdy. Even though I was quite alive and bursting with exuberance, it is no wonder that my acting talents became crippled and subdued in that environment.
It was that in third grade that I was awarded the part of the mother to tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol. I wasn’t exactly excited as I wanted to be the GHOST OF SOMETHING, but I can well remember what I wore to the first rehearsal: a white school-girl sweater and red pants. I knew that when time came for the actual play, that there was no way that the poor mother would get to wear anything vibrant, like the color red, so I had to make it count while I could.
When time came for the actual performance, Ceila Adams and I got to make announcements on the stage to all the parents and other adoring members of the crowd. Ceila and I got along real well, so I was glad to get to do this with her. But the night of the play, she was so very sad because her little white poodle, Muffin, had run away and Ceila was all whiny-like and everything.
As I was the mother, Mrs. Cratchit, in the play, Jeremy Trott was tiny Tim, and he was as I had heard a teacher put it: “a little slow.” Sometimes he would forget his lines and I would have to hiss them through my motherly well-meaning smile sitting across the table from him. This was before Mr. Scrooge’s generosity, so it was easy to see Jeremy as the table was quite bare. I just hated having a husband and all that, especially since it wasn’t Zane but that completely irritating Steven Bower who pulled my hair and called me names. No, while I was busy being the dowdy mother that Charles Dickens had created, the love of my life got to be one of the coveted ghosts, the Ghost of Christmas Past.
To make matters worse, Sharon was the Ghost of Christmas Future which the teachers embellished all up, plus she got to be dark and exciting in intense, black eyeliner, while I was having to worry about having a turkey to cook, and if poor, failing Tiny Tim would make it not only through dinner but Christmas as well.
The day before the play, I fell off the monkey bars. Actually it wasn’t the one in the schoolyard, it was one that I had fashioned myself with an iron bar stuck between two trees. My engineering skills had yet to kick in, in the third grade so I did not realize that the bar would begin to slip inch by inch as I swayed and jiggled and sang:
“Hey, Hey we’re the Monkee…., people say we mess around BUT we’re too busy….DOWN!.”
KERPLUNK!
Well let me tell you, I got put down, and put down in a hurry as I fell almost on top of my head. I managed to get up, even though I was a bit winded, but I didn’t cry. In my severe moment of pain, looking across the yard, I saw a little dog running down the sidewalk, a white poodle. Oh my goodness…..Muffin!,
I got up and managed to run after her and called her name. She turned once to look at me, then ran into somebody else’s yard. I paused…Goodness!, It was the old, cranky Mrs. Wildon’s house. I couldn’t go back there because everybody said she was a witch or something. I just knew that she would be boiling a kettle for Muffin. If I dared to look, it would be her probably making the next batch of stew in some big, black pot beneath the trees. I felt sick to my stomach, and I pondered on the quandary of telling Ceila or not. Oh to survive major head trauma and be worried about small, white, defenseless poodles at the same time!
The afternoon of the play, I put on my maxi length dress in the dressing room. These dresses were handy dandy before celebrity Baby Mamas began sporting them with flip flops, when pregnant, and pretty much any time. The long dress relics of the past not only helped rock a crochet poncho, mood ring, or Indian headband piece, but also worked quiet conveniently as costumes for the mother role I was playing. I waited until Ceila came in and asked her,”
“Ceila, by chance has Muffin come home yet?”
“No,” she replied sadly.
“Hmmmm, do you uh, ever go walking by Mrs. Wildon’s house? I asked.
“Not really, why?” she said.
“Well, I just thought that might be a good place to look if you haven’t already?” I said.
“Do you think she has Muffin?” Ceila asked.
“Well, I don’t know,” I stammered because I was quite worried if Mrs. Wildon was a real witch and all that. Because if she was, she might be viewing us that very minute in her cauldron or her crystal ball, you know witches have all those accessory items and whatnot and I was truly afraid she might put a curse or spell on us….or something.
“I saw a little white dog and that’s all, I don’t really know if it was her or not,” I lied.
“Hmmm,” said Ceila, and frowned. “I don’t think it was Muffin, she never went that far.”
“Probably not,” I said frowning to myself.
Poor Muffin, I thought, she might now be witch soup, or chicken feed, but I had work to do. So I had to put it out of my head and focus with a practically clear conscious as I transformed into Mrs. Cratchitt. I was kinda hoping they would dangle Sharon Adams from ropes when timer for her part came. It might even be possible for those ropes to break or accidentally get gnawed into by some roving beaver, and that Sharon might fall from her lofty perch as the most exciting character in the play and get a little dose of what it felt like to fall out of a tree with a defective monkey bar just because she stole my locket and I felt that some type of retribution should be in order….
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