OYM Day 69: 5,6,7,8

So far, my favorite thing about having a dog is that it’s forcing me to get up just before 6am and sit outside with a coffee. The weather has been beautiful and it just feels more peaceful than writing in my bed, in the dark, under the covers. I will likely feel differently about this a week from now, when I’m overly tired, but for now… thanks, dog.

In high school, there was a yearly variety show called “April Antics.” A sign up sheet would be hung by the lecture hall months prior and groups of friends, quiet loners, divas, class clowns, and even the jocks would rush to sign up for an audition. This wasn’t merely a school talent show. Your talent had to make the cut. I’m sure this was done to keep the show from being 73 hours long, but to a 16 year old teen, it made the show feel as serious as Star Search.

I mean, why not? I had seen enough movies and after school specials to know that talent scouts regularly scoped out the high school circuit for the next big thing. They wore suits and sunglasses and wedged themselves between rows of googly-eyed parents with camcorders. If they scout high school kids at sporting events, why not my group of friends doing original choreography to a medley of Michael Jackson songs? Right?!

Wrong. There were no talent scouts, but I gave no shits. I loved this top-notch talent show and it was my favorite annual school event. I loved to sing, dance, write plays, and dress up. I also loved Michael Jackson. I don’t know if all of my friends loved his music as much as I did, but they went along with it.

We would spend hours practicing. At my house, then someone else’s, then outside the pool house at school. Some years we made our own dance moves. One year we copied one of Michael’s dances, move for move, from the 1995 Video Music Awards. We had it on a tape and had to rewind, rewind, rewind and learn 2–4 beats at a time. After 6 hours of sweating around in a basement, we would collapse onto the floor and order pizzas.

But somehow, we were able to get our act together before every audition and made the cut every year, which meant another month or so of practicing and rehearsals. I lived for this time of year and yes I know it makes me a huge dork. What I would have given to go to one of those performing arts schools I now know about in New York and California…to have my school bag but also my dance bag, my screenplay binder, and a meeting with my acting coach later. April Antics was as close as I was going to get.

We made our own costumes. We organized our own practice hours. We got people’s brothers to burn CD’s with our music so we could each practice at home.

We would watch the other performers during rehearsals, measuring just how much we would blow them out of the water. It wasn’t a competition, necessarily, but it was, because it was high school.

Every year there were a handful of other dance troops besides ours. Most couldn’t rival our attempts at moon walking, doing the worm, and even front flips. The cheerleaders had a dance: snooze...too much clapping and high kicking... and stop doing that weird thing with your mouths. The really good dance kids had a dance: what do you think this is…the ballet?! And the teachers always had a dance at the very end of the show: I felt sorry for them.

There were solo singers, musicians, poets, and usually 1 magician. Someone was always brave enough to try stand up and every year it flopped. There were break dancers, usually the football team doing something stupid in dresses, and once a ventriloquist. One year there was even a knock of version of Blue Man Group. A handful of percussionists from the school band rolled a dilapidated car onto the stage and used just about every part of it to make music. HELLO! TALENT SCOUTS! We were waiting!

I remember the last year of the show. Our group had grown by a few more members. We mixed various pop songs with Michael Jackson songs, a slight departure from our solid MJ hits. It was a one of the most technical dances we’d learned together. We were dressed like prison inmates and holding those signs they use in mugshots. The previous act had just ended and we rushed out behind the curtain to take our places. It was my last year. It was the last time I was going to freeze behind this raggedy velvet curtain and feel my heartbeat in my face. We would glance at each other nervously, making sure we were in the right spots and ready. I looked over at my friend Tom and he smiled the kind of smile that one gives when they know it’s been a good ride.

There’s nothing quite like dancing your heart out. Or singing it out. Or just creating in a way that lets you express yourself. It feels so, so good.

I’m sure if I could find the footage of that last dance, we would probably look just as we were: a gangly bunch of kids from Indiana dressed in our dad’s oversized shirts and costume store hats, dancing to music blasting from blown out speakers, in our dingy beige auditorium, for a crowd of families just waiting for their kids to finish and go to Applebee’s.

But in my head, it’s perfect. We are perfect. And the agents line up in the aisles to learn our names.

A special thanks to Katie Abel for the inspiration for today’s post.