So it’s show week.
Anyone who’s ever been in any kind of performance group (plays, musicals, singing for old folk’s homes) knows that show week is the destroyer of souls.
My soul started out the week like this
And then we had to be off script...
And then Tech show.
And then all the assignments due post Tech show
o, you get kinda shredded by the end of the whole mess, but the show itself more than makes up for it. You ride that adrenaline all the way through four awesome, brilliant shows. Until you realize that you have done a great deal of nothing in the past week and you stay up all Saturday night doing assignments that are due Monday. A joy.
I love the heck out of it.
But what I love even more than DC shows is a good Holiday.
I’m a hardcore decorator of things. I eat up holidays like they’re candy. So the Christmas before I turned 17 I was very busy bedecking my home in its holiday finery when down the street walk the dear young missionaries.
Sometimes missionaries are attractive.
Sometimes you’re 16 and you dig that.
And sometimes you’re wearing an extra large paint shirt with fabulous swishy pants that are, oh yes, not so artfully ripped and torn. Oh, they also smell like an old tent.
You’re a stylish lady, yes ma’am.
Super Fly.
….Yeah, I looked like your average hobo.
The missionaries came over to say hello as I finished stringing the lights on my porch. We exchanged some witty (?) banter and I decided that it was time to check out the results of my decorating skills.
I leapt down from my porch, like a boss. Really, I leapt down like I was mighty Thor descending. A champion. I turned around and began to jog backwards to get a better look of the porch. Again, I was a winner.
A winner who had forgotten about the stump in her front yard.
A winner who jogged backward right into that stump and smacked it with all the force a backward jogger can exert.
I hit that stump. And flew. I really soared. It was probably beautiful, in the way that oil spills are beautiful. So….not.
I hit the ground and my mind went into overdrive. It supplied me with two options:
1. Stay on your back and lie there like a struggling turtle and look like an utter fool or
2. Continue with that momentum from the fall and go into a backwards somersault.
Two! Pick two m’lord!
I continued that glorious fall, rolled like the most skilled pill bug you’ve ever seen, and hopped right back up on my feet. Without missing a beat I said:
“Yep, that’s a good lookin’ house”.
Indeed. I just went on like the entire acrobatics display had never happened.
See, people like me who succeed so entirely at life know that the best way out of a humiliating situation is to ignore it.
What I didn’t realize was that in my glorious fall my awful, smelly, stained shirt betrayed me. It pulled up most of the way up my back and stayed there. My poor back had gotten rather badly scratched in the process and you could see all those cuts in their glory.
There I stood, staring jauntily at my home, shirt halfway up my back, happily ignoring my failure at life, the picture of a sane and well-adjusted high school girl.
The elders burst out laughing.
Heck, I did too; it was hilarious!
But in that moment I knew that it was never acceptable to crush on a missionary. The Lord protects His own from weirdy teens. Oh yes He does.
And that, dear friends, is where I will leave you. With the image of my poor hobo self standing in all her majesty and the knowledge that you will always be cooler than someone.
So go through this week knowing that you’re awesome.
Getitgetit!
Love from,
Tori