Due to the football team's proclivity lately for winning, we had another game today. Which meant that Marching Band was there. Which meant that we were there.
My pit crew team arranged to have a tailgate party before the game -- actually, as we were trying to get all the front-line carts set up -- so it was kind of chaotic. At one point, the guy who had brought the grill asked me to watch it for him, as he had to run inside the school to watch his daughter compete in the swim meet.
So I had to watch the grill and oversee the pit crew operations.
After the carts were out and set up, we put our folding tables in the trailer and stacked them with the food we had brought. Hot dogs, chili, chips, cookies, soda - the usual tailgate fare (I think -- we are not a tailgating family). And we ate. And got stuffed. I had 3 chili hotdogs, which was far too many for me, and then it was time to go out to the field and get the Band ready to go.
It was a good, evenly-matched game. Lots of back and forth, lots of exciting moments. The score stayed tied for most of the last half, and then our team won by a single field goal, 17-14.
We were happy.
Especially after clean-up. When we could go home and relax for a few minutes before heading down south to another high school's production of The Crucible.
I hadn't seen a production of this play since my own high school days (back in the Dark Ages); we'd read the play in one of my classes -- I don't remember which one -- and we'd gone to a professional production of it. But it had been far too long for me to remember any of it. So it was almost as if I'd never seen it at all.
And it was a very good production at this high school.
Deb's friend Sarah (at whose high school this was) knew quite a few of the cast, so she probably had more fun than we did, from a social standpoint. But we were able to enjoy it for the play that it is. Although "enjoy" might be the wrong word. It is a strong play. It is highly offensive at times. And it is difficult to walk away from it without wanting to do something about the blatant injustice of it.
Personally, I was taken aback by the amount of language in it. I'm perhaps too prudish to thoroughly enjoy a play with that much use of expletives (and I'm not talking about the modern expletives that wouldn't have even been considered for use in a play like this; I'm talking about the common, nearly ubiquitous expletives that most everyone takes for granted, so much so that they don't even garner a PG-13 rating anymore). It bothered me that they were being used in a high school play.
I still remember Mrs. Jones' sixth-grade class back in Richmond, Virginia, when the class read aloud a play which was in some kind of "Weekly Reader" magazine. (I thought it was "The Red Badge of Courage", but am not really sure since my memory is not what it used to be, but I remember very clearly the very last part of whatever play it was.) She had asked me to read the part of the protagonist because I enunciated clearly and loudly. And everything was fine until we got to the final line in the play, when the protagonist utters two expletives.
And I couldn't do it.
And all the other kids in the class knew I couldn't do it. They knew I was one of those goody-goody kids who went to church and didn't cuss or cheat or steal or anything. And they were just waiting to see what I would do. They were ready to hear the teacher get on my case about it. Finally, Mr Goody-Two-Shoes was going to get in trouble!
And I was confused. Why would Mrs. Jones, that nice Baptist lady (who prayed with us before sending us off to lunch), make me say those bad words? How could she do this to me?
(And why was it in a Weekly Reader magazine? That's another question which was never answered satisfactorily.)
So for the first time in my life, I pretended not to know how to pronounce a word. A simple word. A word I'd read many times before. A word that scared me. Because only bad people used this word.
I said the line. Dully. Flatly. Monotonously. Badly. As if I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it meant.
"Dan you. Dan you."
And I turned bright red.
I don't know if Mrs. Jones noticed. But I do remember one of the other boys noticed. A nemesis. A bully (at least in my eyes). One of those cute, blond boys who had been told all his life that he was handsome to the point where he believed it was his God-given right. And all the girls believed it, too. I can still see his face in my mind's eye, the look on his face as he smiled with that certain smile that said, Ha! Not so smart, are you?
I wanted nothing more than to run outside for recess and forget the whole thing. But I never did. Not after forty years.
Funny how the mind works.
I enjoyed The Crucible. It's not something I'm likely to ever see again, unless someone I know is in it. The things that happen in that play are immutable and horrifying. And it gives one such a desire to go back in time and knock some heads together.
Especially when one realizes that one of Cheryl's relatives was actually there.
My pit crew team arranged to have a tailgate party before the game -- actually, as we were trying to get all the front-line carts set up -- so it was kind of chaotic. At one point, the guy who had brought the grill asked me to watch it for him, as he had to run inside the school to watch his daughter compete in the swim meet.
So I had to watch the grill and oversee the pit crew operations.
After the carts were out and set up, we put our folding tables in the trailer and stacked them with the food we had brought. Hot dogs, chili, chips, cookies, soda - the usual tailgate fare (I think -- we are not a tailgating family). And we ate. And got stuffed. I had 3 chili hotdogs, which was far too many for me, and then it was time to go out to the field and get the Band ready to go.
It was a good, evenly-matched game. Lots of back and forth, lots of exciting moments. The score stayed tied for most of the last half, and then our team won by a single field goal, 17-14.
We were happy.
Especially after clean-up. When we could go home and relax for a few minutes before heading down south to another high school's production of The Crucible.
I hadn't seen a production of this play since my own high school days (back in the Dark Ages); we'd read the play in one of my classes -- I don't remember which one -- and we'd gone to a professional production of it. But it had been far too long for me to remember any of it. So it was almost as if I'd never seen it at all.
And it was a very good production at this high school.
Deb's friend Sarah (at whose high school this was) knew quite a few of the cast, so she probably had more fun than we did, from a social standpoint. But we were able to enjoy it for the play that it is. Although "enjoy" might be the wrong word. It is a strong play. It is highly offensive at times. And it is difficult to walk away from it without wanting to do something about the blatant injustice of it.
Personally, I was taken aback by the amount of language in it. I'm perhaps too prudish to thoroughly enjoy a play with that much use of expletives (and I'm not talking about the modern expletives that wouldn't have even been considered for use in a play like this; I'm talking about the common, nearly ubiquitous expletives that most everyone takes for granted, so much so that they don't even garner a PG-13 rating anymore). It bothered me that they were being used in a high school play.
I still remember Mrs. Jones' sixth-grade class back in Richmond, Virginia, when the class read aloud a play which was in some kind of "Weekly Reader" magazine. (I thought it was "The Red Badge of Courage", but am not really sure since my memory is not what it used to be, but I remember very clearly the very last part of whatever play it was.) She had asked me to read the part of the protagonist because I enunciated clearly and loudly. And everything was fine until we got to the final line in the play, when the protagonist utters two expletives.
And I couldn't do it.
And all the other kids in the class knew I couldn't do it. They knew I was one of those goody-goody kids who went to church and didn't cuss or cheat or steal or anything. And they were just waiting to see what I would do. They were ready to hear the teacher get on my case about it. Finally, Mr Goody-Two-Shoes was going to get in trouble!
And I was confused. Why would Mrs. Jones, that nice Baptist lady (who prayed with us before sending us off to lunch), make me say those bad words? How could she do this to me?
(And why was it in a Weekly Reader magazine? That's another question which was never answered satisfactorily.)
So for the first time in my life, I pretended not to know how to pronounce a word. A simple word. A word I'd read many times before. A word that scared me. Because only bad people used this word.
I said the line. Dully. Flatly. Monotonously. Badly. As if I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it meant.
"Dan you. Dan you."
And I turned bright red.
I don't know if Mrs. Jones noticed. But I do remember one of the other boys noticed. A nemesis. A bully (at least in my eyes). One of those cute, blond boys who had been told all his life that he was handsome to the point where he believed it was his God-given right. And all the girls believed it, too. I can still see his face in my mind's eye, the look on his face as he smiled with that certain smile that said, Ha! Not so smart, are you?
I wanted nothing more than to run outside for recess and forget the whole thing. But I never did. Not after forty years.
Funny how the mind works.
I enjoyed The Crucible. It's not something I'm likely to ever see again, unless someone I know is in it. The things that happen in that play are immutable and horrifying. And it gives one such a desire to go back in time and knock some heads together.
Especially when one realizes that one of Cheryl's relatives was actually there.
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