Okay people, I'm really not sure of the best way to do this... I'm hoping
to finish writing The Story of my Life by the end of the month, but the
updates are going to come at irregular intervals, so I figured this would
be the best way to do it, even though it's probably not the most
"orthadox" way to do it. So I'm going to post the updates here as
responses, and leave #106 (the original story) as the place for
discussion.

-- Don

3 responses total.

THE PLAY, GIRLS DRESSING, AND STARING AT A RUG
        Each year, DA's fine arts department puts on a fall play, a winter
musical, and spring student-written one-acts. When Mr. Eric Singdahlsen,
the drama teacher, held auditions for The Phantom Tollbooth, I decided to
try out, even though my only experience in drama was a semester and a half
of theatre class. I tried out, and got called back the next day, but I
didn't recieve a part.
        This had all started around the time when I was starting driver's
ed, a two hour class after school, which at first greatly fatigued me. So
getting bad news, while lacking the energy to accept anything harsher than
a fly buzzing around me, made me go under for a while. I would come home,
do some homework, and try to get as much rest as I could. I usually ended
up having to finish my homework during homeroom or right before class
started.
        A few weeks later, around the time driver's ed was wrapping up,
Mr. Sing pulled me aside after my drama class and told me that an actress
was going to have to drop out, so could I please fill in the part? I was
more than happy to.
        So the weeks rolled by, and I rehearsed the role of the Earl of
Essence, along with having a few background parts; a basically
unrewarding, damned small part. I didn't mind too much, especially once I
realized that I was the only freshman in the play; that surprised me,
especially considering that I didn't have any performing experience.
        Closer to production, we started having evening rehearsals. I was
the first to arrive at school, and found the front entrance to the
auditorium locked. I tried the side door, also locked. So I went all the
way around and entered through the scene shop, whose doors were locked but
opened anyway. So I sat in a chair in the middle of the audience, with
complete silence around me. I liked it; quiet, serene, downright peaceful.
After a while, people started knocking at the doors, so I let them in.
Someone held the front door open with a trash can, and people came in
freely. All of us were just talking and fooling around when Mr. Sing
barged in... He wasn't that happy about us being in there. So he gathered
around and told us about how he was responsable for us and for whatever
happened to us, and about coming in unsupervised, to put it in a nutshell,
"Don't fucking do it. Just don't fucking do it." Then he cooled down and
we started our rehearsal. To this day, whenever he says something about
anybody's language, I tell him, with a straight face, "Don't fucking do
it."
        A few nights later was our first dress rehearsal. Somehow I messed
up my first line, "Welcome", and that really got Mr. Singdahlsen pissed
off. Later on, Christina Bejan, a blonde junior with long, frizzy hair,
was in her dodecahedron costume, a big 3-D polygon-type thing with two
little eyeholes. She was doing a monologue, getting more and more exited
by the minute, when she walked forward but overshot her mark and, with a
shriek that would have made a mouse proud, fell off the stage. Everyone
offstage came out to see what had happened, most of us desparately trying
to stiffle a laugh, few of us succeeding. It turned out that she was OK,
but she always would stayed a little farther upstage after that.
        The next night, we (obviously) had our second dress rehearsal. I
remembered my lines, and nobody fell off the stage, but Brooks Adcock
accidentally powerdrilled a whole through his hand. So he was rushed to
the Duke University Medical Center, and the rehearsal continued.
        Our final dress rehearsal, even though we _still_ didn't have all
of our props, had a few people were in the audience (bigwig types like the
headmaster and the Upper School director). In one of the early scenes, I
was flat on the ground just offstage, waiting to crawl in (for anyone
familiar with the story, I was a Lethargarian in the Dolldrums), when the
periactoi (basically a huge, tower-like thing in the shape of a triangular
prism) a few feet to my left fell down, along with the two girls standing
on stools in it (the princesses Rhyme and Reason), with a loud crashing
sound. It almost landed on someone, but somehow the girls inside were
unhurt. The bigwigs already knew about the drilling from the night before,
so Mr. Singdahlsen began to fear for his job even more after what had just
happened.
        The first performance was Friday the 13th, so naturally everyone
was scared shitless. The tech manager assured us over and over again that
"a bad dress means a great performance." We finally had 97% of our props.
Everything went fine, and the show opened to a full house, which rarely
happens at DA.
        The day after, we had our second performance. Our prop count was
up to around 99%, and everyone said screw it to the last percent. The show
was again a success, but during the middle of it I got myself kicked in
the ass. Behind the stage was an art room, which doubled as our
changing/meeting/hanging-out room. I had just finished my scene and
intermission would be coming up in a bit. I went to the door (it was
slightly ajar), and saw through the crack that there were some guys in
there. So I figured that there wouldn't be anybody changing in there, at
least not girls.
        Wrong.
        Jeni Smith, a blonde who could easily get a job as a lingerie
model, eeked a bit. No, it was more like an eep. My face went red, and I
left the room quickly. Somehow she never mentioned it afterwards.
        We had a cast party after the show at Mary Guiterras's house.
Everyone stayed at school to take down the set... exept for me, who
somehow thought that that task would be done on Monday at school. So my
brother drove me to Mary's house, and we arrived to an empty house. Ten
minutes later, Mary's parents arrived. Another 5 minutes later, one person
came. Ten minutes after that, people started coming in waves.
        So I got a spot on the couch in the living room while we all
watched "When Good Pets go Bad." It ended, and I soon faded out of the
conversations, and found myself staring at a spot on the rug. I sat there
for around fifteen minutes, just staring at the rug, when I started to
hear people wondering what I was doing. Someone yelled "Don?", so I looked
up quickly said, "yes?", and returned my eyes to the rug. Everyone just
laughed, and returned to their conversations. A few minutes later, people
start getting bored, and are wondering what to do. So, with my eyes still
on the rug, I say, "Let's play spin the bottle!" Of course, everyone
thought that was hilarious.
        Towards the end of the party, people had polarized between the
living room and Mary's bedroom. I eventually followed the exodus. Almost
immediately, I was chalenged to a thumb-wrestle by various people. Since
the beginning of school, I had been known for my prowess in
thumb-wrestling, and these people wanted to test me. I managed to beat
everyone, including Jason Sholtz, a huge basketball player that would have
been the star of the football team if we would ever have had a football
team. I ended up playing against this guy who cheated the first time, got
into a draw with me the second, and lost the third. To this day he still
claims victory, but that night I was practically yelling at the top of my
lungs to explain how I had won. Then I had to go, and Mary escorted me to
the door, with a look that made me unsure of whether or not she was pissed
off at me.

This response has been erased.

(#2 has been scribbled becasue I revised it a bit)

THE CAN
        The first time I realized that something was wrong was during the
lunch break on a nice autumn day. After I finished eating my sandwich at a
table by myself, I threw the bag away and headed for the recycling bin to
chuck my can.
        Right under one of the bulletin boards was a bin, and to the left
was a group of girls chatting their asses off. As I neared, they got
quieter and quieter. They became completely silent (their asses even
reattached themselves) when I got a few feet away from the bin. I sensed
the tension and tossed the can sooner than I would normally have done,
risking an overshoot, which would have landed on one of the girls and
could have been my biggest kick in the ass so far. But the can made it in,
and I did an about-face and walked off.
        As I got farther away, they gradually began to start talking
again. The first thing I heard was my name in a malicious tone. I sat back
down at the table and slowly began to understand what was wrong. By then
there weren't many people yelling my name out from across the distance,
and of course I was eating solo; my "popularity" was short-lived, and had
just now croaked. Life became a bit bleak.

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