Friday
Seriously, we sold out the senior citizen performance. That's unheard of.
For a lot of people, their last show senior year is the last time they ever act on stage. While Friday night's performance was the last time on the Johnson Auditorium stage for Wil and Amy, it ended up not being the last time ever for Wil (I don't know about Amy). Wil (now known as Will; he was trying the one "l" thing back then) is a professional actor now, seen in commercials and onstage in LA. Katrina, from the other lead team, is also a professional actor. And speaking of...
Secret writing translation:
Katrina is the perfect girl to marry -- she is the kind of girl you want to spend the rest of your life with.
This sounds like I'm totally crushed out, but I wasn't. After our non-date, I recognized that she wasn't interested in me, and I was fine with that. She was such a cool person -- and smart, and funny, and beautiful -- that I couldn't help but think that whoever got to spend their life with her would be incredibly lucky. I knew that wouldn't be me, but I couldn't help but envy whoever it was.
This note caused some trouble eventually. I told Cinnamon about it (or she discovered it after I showed her how to read the writing) and she probably didn't entirely believe that I wasn't crushed out. No, that's not the trouble. The trouble came at my 10 year reunion, which for some reason I strongly felt Cinnamon should come with me to. One of the very few people I was really looking forward to seeing was Katrina -- and as it turned out, she was looking forward to seeing me too. We were having a great time catching up ...and then I introduced her to Cinnamon, who was off somewhere else, getting tipsy. Upon meeting Katrina, Cinnamon blurted out, "Oh, you're the one Andrew wanted to marry."
I can't say for sure our joyful reconnection was completely ruined by this revelation and my subsequent embarrassed explanation, but Katrina did seem to get a little more distant for the rest of the evening, and never followed up on our earlier vague plans to meet up for coffee. Cinnamon still feels bad.
And you wonder why I kept some writing secret.
Saturday
"Plug cool," by the way, was an inside joke among the Jets. They've got a song about "staying cool." I don't recall where "plugging" came from, but during West Side Story it stood in, essentially, for a certain f word.
And look! More secret writing!
I think Gaby is mad at me... But I found out she isn't.
I have no idea what that's about.
So, this was my last night on the high school stage -- as well as the last for my friend Ryan V., and Mark M. I didn't expect it to be such an emotional experience, but it hit me hard. I had one more performance the next day.
It was weird sitting alone on the stage, with nothing but the safety lights on. A big, empty space. I had never been out there alone, without even an audience. Incredibly humbling.
Leave a comment