Vrrrroooooom!!!

So I'm writing freelance-like again. Can anyone guess the topic? Here's a hint: I just zoomed around the new library's foyer with arms straight out (and Dana laughing at my hijinks) and I'm feeling my lack of physics education where it hurts...

PLANES!

Planes are fun. Planes fly in the sky. I like planes. Do you like planes?

My actions in the library remind me of an anecdote. Lucky lucky blogreaders, sit back and enjoy.

I have this friend from my lovely days in Victor NY, and his name is DannyWelch. I would say he's a High School friend, which is true, but in Victor you know everyone from the first day of nursery school onward. But Danny and I got to be better friends in High School.

I think our paths began to cross more often when DannyWelch joined the chorus and the musical. He was a joiner, in general.

Ahh... the musical... it was West Side Story our Senior Year. I had auditioned (poorly, of course), gotten a small part out of pity from my mentor/teacher Mr. Gary Thomas, and backed out after the first rehearsal due to last-semester-senior-year panic attacks. But that's another story altogether.

If you know anything about West Side Story, you probably know that there are two gangs who dance about fruitily and sing about how cool they are. The Puerto Rican gang call themselves the Sharks (why not Los Tiburones?) and the white kids called themselves The Jets. Snappy, eh? Lucky for Victor, we had three latino citizens. Two were brothers. They both had leads. The third was imported from New Mexico or something back in eighth grade, her name was Emily Torres, and she was an awful person. She also had an adequate voice and was cast as Maria.

So DannyWelch was a Jet, not merely because he's a white kid, but because he has a lot of energy and no one could mistake him for being a Shark of any kind. It's his sweetness, I think, and his gung-ho attitude. I think that one of the high points of DannyWelch's High School career (besides receiving instructions from our English teacher to skip our English class and go to Perkins because he was one of three people in the class who wrote the assigned paper correctly [Gutter and JoBiv were the other two]) was the opening scene of our spirited rendition of West Side Story.

Imagine with me...

The audience, comprised mostly of relatives of cast members, squirms in its collective seat, bored already and praying that its respective child hits his/her respective high note. Suddenly, the orchestra leaps to life, squeakily but adequately delivering energetic music while the audience takes in our set designs of faux brick and graffiti. Then, all of the sudden, ZOOOOOM, here comes DannyWelch, arms standing out stiff while his legs wheel below him, careening around in dizzying circles as though there's engine trouble and he may crash and burn at any second.

Wow, that kid sure is a convincing plane, the audience thinks to itself.

Meanwhile, JoBiv (helping with hair and make-up) and best friend at the time SarahFerg (playing Anita), who have seen this scene about thirty times over the past weeks of rehearsals, finally get it at the last show. "Ohhh... He's a Jet!"


How did I ever get into college?

Oh yeah, the overall dumbing-down of America and lies lies lies on applications! That's how!