Olympus High School Class of 2000 Alumni Website

They held the Christmas children’s pageant at church today. We all sang carols while sheep and angels and wise men tripped and bumped their way up to the stage, stumbled around, waved at their parents, and then tripped and bumped back out. The whole production only lasted about fifteen minutes, so church was unusually short and soon we found ourselves out in the parking lot, warm with holiday fuzzies if not spiritually enlightened.

Fun fact: when I was four and five, I was Mary in the school Christmas pageant. I attended a Baptist private school for Kindergarten and the first grade, so naturally our school went the whole nine yards for the holidays. I’m actually more in favor of separating church and school, but I have to admit that I know bible stories and holiday hymns better than pretty much anyone I know! The Christmas pageant was the cherry on top of our December festivities and I was lucky enough to get cast as Mary both times.

If you’ve never been in a Christmas pageant, being Mary is a pretty big deal. It’s the best part a girl can play, even better than the angel who goes down to the shepherds and tells them what’s going on. Mary gets to hold the baby Jesus and sit looking pretty and pious while every comes up and oohs and aahs around her. Well, in our case I just sat looking pretty and pious because Joseph and I actually sat in a little window alcove high above everyone else, next to a manger that was a ridiculous size in hindsight.

In the pageant, my job was to go walking and the angel would come to me and tell me that I was having baby Jesus. Then I would go tell Joseph and he would lead me up to the stairs that led to the alcove. When I went around the corner to the stairs, my teacher handed me the baby Jesus, whom I was supposed to drop off in the manger before I sat down, while everyone else sang O Little Town of Bethlehem.

This is pretty standard pageant procedure, but the second year I did it, I had a horrible realization during rehearsal. It occurred to me that this wasn’t realistic at all. I didn’t even look pregnant when I walked around the steps and suddenly I was supposed to have a baby? We were doing it all wrong!!!

In a panic, I approached the teacher and explained that we’d forgotten to make me look pregnant, but she brushed me off, saying it wasn’t a problem. I was confused, because she had recently had a baby and I didn’t know how she didn’t know about pregnancy. So, I loudly explained (in front of the class) that the baby needs to grow in the tummy of the mommy and then come out between the legs. I added that I had seen this happen (which was not true, but seeing it in my father’s medical texts seemed close enough). My teacher just shook her head and tried to take me out into the hall. As she dragged me out, I loudly asked her if she remembered when her baby came out between her legs.

This would later be remembered as the Christmas when I learned that you aren’t supposed to talk about reproduction at school. Despite all protests, I was not allowed to put baby Jesus under my dress and then give birth to him in the alcove, even though my friend Ben (who played Joseph) agreed that it would be better if everyone saw him pop out and offered to help me catch him. And, although I had my misgivings, I was assured that God wouldn’t mind if we skipped that whole part since the real point of the story is everything that happened afterwards.

Today, Mary walked to the front of the stage, pulled baby Jesus out from behind a large poinsettia plant, and put him in the manger. A child behind me (apparently not pageant worthy), remarked, “Look! Baby Jesus came out of the flower!”

Christmas pageants. Might be the best place to start that whole reproduction lesson. I’m just sayin’…

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They held the Christmas children's pageant at church today. We

Last night, my family went to see the Riverton High School production of Les Miserables. Les Mis is a pretty ambitious choice for a high school musical, but the lead seemed made for the part and the show was actually quite good. There were the usual complaints (faulty mikes, a poorly cast player, a chorus girl who couldn’t stop grinning at the audience) but all in all it was a really well done show. The sets, in particular, were incredibly detailed and impressive. Of course, I could just be easily impressed thanks to my own years on the stage.

Confession: I was a drama geek in high school.

You know how cool those kids are in High School Musical and how everyone wants to be them and how children all over the world bought their dolls and action figures? Yeah, in reality performing in high school is nothing like that. If they had made a Disney channel movie about our high school musicals, it would have featured a cast of incredibly lame, melodramatic adolescents who were obsessed with Rent and the love triangles of the drama club.

It’s funny, but I went all through school and then some believing that nothing was greater than drama and people were just missing out. It took some time (years, even) to realize that our drama kids were total weirdos who enjoyed being the center of attention or total space cadets who wanted nothing more than to escape into an alternate reality for a couple of hours a day. That realization made all of the drama that came with being in drama seem really…well, lame.

Still, even in all its lameness, my drama geek years continue to haunt me. Case in point: one of the most rotten things that happened to me in high school was that I was cast as one of the leads in our senior year high school play. Auditions were open, but there’s a 90% chance that I walked onto the part because I spent three years kissing butt and doing grunt work for the theater department. Although I had performed in ensemble pieces and done the occasional monologue, I had no real experience being on stage and it’s safe to say that I kind of sucked.

The great things about being in the play included wearing lovely costumes that I designed and made, as well as starring with some of my best friends. Unfortunately, the worst things about the play included being so nervous about being on stage that I was prone to random bouts of hysterical laughter and being so overwrought by a month of rehearsals that I couldn’t keep anything in my stomach by the time the play actually came about. At the time, it just seemed so completely life or death that I was going to ruin the play with my horrible acting and everyone in the school would witness this car accident as it happened.

Reality: I think about 40 people came to those plays if you don’t include the people who were related to the actors. In all fairness, the bar for acting was pretty high, since our high school was serious about theater, but thanks to some really terrible scenery and the fact that I shared the stage with lots of brilliant people, I doubt that my performance permanently damaged the school’s reputation in creative arts. I even got verbal approval from the boy I had a secret crush on for six years, who said, “You were good in that play.” (Yes, that is a verbatim quote, which I will never forget. I know this because that boy said a total of 14 words to me in high school, 6 of which are the ones I just mentioned. Yes, I was counting…but that is a whole blog post in itself.)

Honestly, though, even knowing that it all didn’t matter doesn’t keep me from having nightmares about being in that play. I have dreams that I’m on stage and we’re performing, only I don’t know my lines or what character I am or what play I’m doing. Sometimes I’m on stage and spotlights just start to fall from the rafters until I’m buried under them. The worst, though, involves the entire school witnessing me walk onto stage completely naked. In that dream, the stage inevitably turns into an island with deep canyons on all sides and I have no choice but to just stand there.

So last night, when I was watching Les Mis, I kept thinking about all the kids on stage, knowing that most of them are completely wrapped up in the performance and really believe that the musical is the most important thing on the planet these days. Do I envy them? Maybe, but only because I miss the comraderie of learning lines and the gossip circles that formed during rehearsals. The spotlight, however? Not missed. I’ll leave that to the Jean Valjeans of the world.

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Last night, my family went to see the Riverton High School