What Amanda's Been Teasing Me About

      Since I first heard it I thought Brad Paisley's "Come On Over Tonight" I thought it was clever - the use of cliches is amazing. It doesn't quite fit this week, but it's been an almost Song of the Day, in that it's played off and on, but I had an idea why. That why was what I mentioned in the previous post that Amanda has been gleefully tormenting me about all week. (I do torment Jon and his girlfriend Delaney, though, so it all works out.) This will probably be a longish post. Not quite Steve Rogers-frozen-in-Arctic-ice-for-sixty-five-years long, but this is a tale that rambles a little.

     RSU Theater held auditions for their spring production, an adaptation of Tom Sawyer, in late January. The feeling was a tentative "Well, we're holding auditions, but we don't actually know if there'll be enough money to actually put this show on" due to budget concerns. But hey, Mark Twain is one of my favorite authors, and it's a classic of American literature. An adaptation would have to stay close to the material, wouldn't it?
     With some trepidation over this last point, I show up at auditions with....four other people in the auditorium on Tuesday night. So that's not great numbers, at all, but on the other hand, I'm likely to earn a role simply by showing up. (More people showed up throughout the night, I knew about half of them either from classes or from working with them on Tales From Tent City.) January can be nasty weather, and I was already depressed, figured if nothing else it would me some good just to be around people outside of a classroom setting. I audition for Tom and Huck, and read off various roles as a stand-in, watch everyone else's auditions.
     I come back the the auditorium Thursday night for the second half of auditions, because that's what you do. Since they were also casting for the lesbian script-reading project at the same time, most of the time was spent serving as the audience, and also paying attention to the monologue of various would-be St. Petersburg ministers. During one of these funeral sermons a quiet Comm major named Brittany slips in through the side door everyone uses as the main entrance and slides into a chair in the corner. (She'd just gotten off work.) I notice this because I'm sitting closest to the door, and she's parked right across the aisle. I don't really know her, but our paths have almost-crossed a lot, just enough to know that she's friendly and a member of the Race of Joseph. I quickly turn my attention back to whoever was monologuing, because it's awkward to be stared at when you enter a room. As soon as whoever was up there finishes his monologue, David (the director) scans the room to pick out a couple people to run the next scene, and....
     "WES! BRITTANY! You two try running the engagement scene!"
     Really? No warning, and work with basically-a-stranger on Tom and Becky's engagement scene, one of the most memorable scenes from one of the most well-known books of all time? She thought it was extremely awkward, too, but in a later-this-will-be-hysterical way. Anyway, we rehearse the scene twice through in the hallway, and get about halfway through a third take, when we hear David yelling at us for taking too long and to try it onstage. We exchange a glance walking up the aisle which says plainly, "What? This is a weird situation. Of course we're gonna practice the scene as much as we can..." It goes all right, though, and we talk for a while during the rest of the audition, since it's mainly for the other project that neither of us care about.

     Time passes, at the last second it's like, "Oh, okay, the show's on! Let's go!" It's a staged reading, which means mostly voice acting, with key scenes performed, and instead of the auditorium, it's held in the performance studio in Baird Hall. I get cast as primarily Sid Sawyer (almost everyone played multiple roles), and while Brittany doesn't get a part, David hires her as assistant director and stage manager. Among other duties, she fills in for absent actors during rehearsals, which as a stand-in for Injun Joe meant we scuffle in the graveyard scene before she murdered me. Repeatedly. Muff Potter is played by Dr. Hatley, and so there was a lot of fight choreography to block out between the three of us, and then we all had to reteach it to the actual Injun Joe, a huge guy named Bubba. During breaks, Brittany and I tend to drift towards each other, finding a bit of groundedness in the craziness of the extroverted personalities we're working with.
      Towards the end of the rehearsal process, I ask Amanda for clarification in decoding female nonverbal communication signals, outlining Brittany's behavior. (Adopted sisters are useful that way.) "Oh, yeeeahhh. That means she's definitely interested. Ask her out!"
     So I try to....and the words are never quite able to leave my mouth. Still, gossip goes around, which we both overhear - stuff like "They'd make a great couple! They're both odd." Um....thanks? That's the same type of complinsult most of my poetry gets. "Besides, they look good standing next to each other."

     Rewinding now. 
     It's November last year. I'm studying Jane Austen's Emma in the rec room of the Centennial Center one typical Thursday morning when I hear this noise. (It's a very tiresome read, so any distraction was welcome.) So I look up to see what the noise is. A pretty brunette I know by sight comes in and sits down at a table that's on the other side of the room. She has a coffee in one hand, looking around nervously for a bit.

     I turn my attention back to the novel, when a guy comes into the room a couple minutes later. Okay, I figure, they're on like a first date or whatever....this is awkward. I'll just blend into the chair, because it would be more awkward to leave, because I'm on the far side of the room, and they're near the doorway. 

     They start talking.

     I can't really hear but bits and pieces, and mainly tones. Soon it becomes apparent that they've been dating for a while, but that it was a secret, and they're just now letting people know. But she was dating his friend, and they hadn't broken up yet.... so that was what the argument was about. I can hear them really well now, because their tone has shifted from that ultra-serious deadly quiet into normal room-temperature I'm-mad-at-you levels. And now it would be really awkward to leave, since it would look like I was listening the entire time. But I can't read with a couple arguing about their relationship twenty feet away! It's like Hemingway's story "Hills Like White Elephants." Eventually the girl sighs. "Well....at least now we've had our first big fight." Their conversation goes into lighter details and I can finally read again. 

     Convinced that now would be an okay time to leave the room, I tuck the novel into my backpack and get ready to leave. And then I see that they were running lines of a script the entire time.
     This is an extremely embarrassing story, but I know people will find it hilarious, so I type it down. (Particularly funny to me was how appropriate the book fit the situation - Emma is almost entirely about romantic miscommunication. But if you want to know the story, just watch Clueless instead, it's much better.) 
     I go to the RSU Theater show that night, mostly because I'm curious about what on earth that script was actually about, since I figured I had to be missing a lot of details. And another reason I went was because every person in the audience helps morale. Seven short plays, most of them student-written, were the show. A comedy with an overly literal doctor and his increasingly-panicked patient opened the show, it was something like "Who's On First?" except the question was about the patient's mortality. There was a depressing romance between childhood now-adult friends in their treehouse in southern Arkansas (it didn't end happily), and a depressing drama about what it means to collect things. There was a well-captured transcription of a bizarre phone call overheard in a Bentonville Taco Bell, and an equally-bizarre screwball comedy from Script Writing about a man who discovers his slacker roommate has finally gotten a new job - as the Greek god of...kidneys. A thought-provoking drama about what it meant for a homeless veteran to have served his country was especially well-done, firstly because David wrote it, secondly because Tent City was still fresh in my mind, thirdly because a lot of the Script Writing projects we did involved the military in some way, and fourthly because David was playing the homeless veteran, because the regular actor, a history professor named Dr. Hatley, wasn't able to be there. The seventh of these seven shows was the script I overheard, which turned out  to be a romance set in an airport. It ended happily. 
     I went back again on Saturday night, because I wanted to see how Dr. Hatley played the homeless veteran, get a better feel for the timing of the jokes on the doctor one, and to rewatch the airport one, because the plot was fairly complicated. Stayed behind after the show to chat a bit with the cast members, particularly the girl, whose name is Brittany and who, I can instantly tell, is of the Race of Joseph. But that doesn't necessarily mean anything - you never know if once you meet a member if you'll see them again. But it was an enjoyable chat. 

     Last Thursday night the show goes better than expected. And about half the cast and crew decide to grab some food afterwards, because you get hungry; everyone's too nervous to eat beforehand. Eventually after a long debate the destination agreed upon is Buffalo Wild Wings, which Brittany was lobbying for the entire time. A couple of people look at me: "You're coming, right?" (I had missed most of this conversation as I was returning chairs to the classroom they belonged to.) "Sounds fun, but I'd need a-" "You can ride with me," Brittany volunteers before I can even finish the sentence. Okay, cool.
     "Radio controls are here, I've got a CD in there now - it's Celtic music-" she tries to apologize. I assure her that that's fine, mention my Pandora channel of Irish music. She says it's part of the material her choir is working on. "Things are so busy, I usually study this while driving. I really need to practice..." I say something like that'd be fine. "Seriously?" she frowns. I nod. So Brittany launches into several Irish ballads, one of which I'd heard before, all of which are slightly incomprehensible but very beautiful. We also argued for a while about the precision of "indifferent" vs. "indecisive," figuring finally that one of those words fit our personalities, but not sure which of those words was correct. (Whichever it is, Coulson said it well when talking once to May in an season-one episode of Agents: "I know you wouldn't tell me if it wasn't a problem, but I also know you wouldn't tell me if it was.")
     We get there ahead of the others - Jairus (Tom) and a girl he knows, plus Alex (Huck) - and stake out a booth. They were held up by Claremore trains, arriving about fifteen to twenty minutes later. Since sports bars are extremely noisy, and because we're mashed up against the walls, and because we are both extremely soft-spoken, mostly Brittany and I just talked to each other while the other three talked amongst themselves, though there were tablewide conversations as well 
     "So it was a semi date, and it went well! Good!" Amanda says. "Now ask her on a real one." 
     I did. It went awkwardly, but was successful, as we planned to meet up Monday night at the Hilltop Coffee Shop. 

     I get there about twenty minutes early, since I'm unusually early for everything. While waiting I practice being a cat in watching Sarge the widower swan (or "cob," according to E.B. White) from the safe distance of inside the Centennial Center, because everyone on campus is terrified of him. (Seriously, why don't we say that a widower was widowered?) Everyone is also terrified by the herd of geese who live here, too, but Sarge is much worse - swans are better to watch, because they're more elegant, but they're also agressively mean and apathetic. Particularly if they are widowed, since they are monogamous birds. So watching Sarge mope through his days is fascinating, but kind of pitiful - like Tom Hanks before he gets Meg Ryan's letter in Sleepless in Seattle. 
     Brittany arrives just before our scheduled meeting time of 7:30. It'd been a rough day - daycare teachers lead stressful lives. After she vents for a bit, our conversation ventures from rabbits to acting to women's swimsuit design to government bureaucracy, and the general conclusions that this world is messed up and people are stupid. She also tried to explain the intricacies of hairstyling after I asked what the difference was between a regular braid and a French braid.
     After we finish our coffee, we decide to go for a walk only to notice that Sarge is still wandering around. "I wonder...d'you think we could feed him? Maybe that'd make him happier...." Brittany suggests. I think about this for a second. "We could try..." So we go to the convenience store and buy a can of Pringles. Sarge hisses at us, sniffs at the chips, and declares that he has no intention of eating them. 
     So we continue our walk and talk, which goes for about three hours as we lose track of time and devour the miles (and Pringles), circumnavigating campus roughly eight times. We also tried to prowl through the nature reserve, but that didn't go as well. It was dark - neither of us couldn't see anything. Also, we ran into a bunch of creepy people with heavy-duty flashlights, which seemed a bit sketchy. 
     Conversation topics include our mutual night blindness, our mutual prematurity, family stories, dealing with those with special needs, more about Tom Sawyer in particular and past productions generally. (Brittany was this close to getting the role of Lily in Tent City. I didn't know this because Cody [Joe Harper] dropped out a week into production, where I was then inserted as Crick.) Other conversational topics include stereotyping, swearing (Conclusion: not generally beneficial, but when necessary, as much as will get the point across most effectively), improvisation (I like it, she can't do it to save her life), complaining about irritating classmates, the uncomfortableness of transgenderism, the difficult balancing act between Christianity and the culture of storycrafting, the role of God's providence in daily life, Christianity and alcohol usage (Conclusion: "Don't get drunk, but a little bit once in a while probably isn't sinful") and more arguments about grammar. She recounted a lot of stories about growing up as a twin, ("Wait, I haven't told these before?") she was an extremely mischievous child, the youngest of four. 
     Finally we arrive at a park bench and sit there for a moment in companionable silence. "You know what?" she asks. "No, what?" "My hair's magic." "Yeah?" "Yeah," she nods solemnly. "How you figure that?" I smile. "No matter what I do to it, it immediately falls back down straight. I try to put hairspray in it, fifteen minutes later it's flat again " (Her hair is very glossy and silky, like how L.M. Montgomery describes Cecily's hair in The Story Girl and The Golden Road.) She shakes it down. With a giggle, she flips it in my direction. "Now you try!" Try what, I ask. "Braiding my hair." So I attempt to. After she explains the process.I can get a couple  halfway-decent small braids by her ear. Her feedback - "First time trying this.....that's pretty good!" At some point she snickers. "I just realized how weird this scene probably looks [to people walking by]." "Probably does, but I don't think they're paying attention," I agree. 
     When she had me try turning her ponytail into a thick braid that didn't go as well, but apparently that's several skill levels more advanced. Once we decide it could be practice for another day, we sit there for a bit, and she makes a discovery. "I've taught guys how to braid hair before, like if their sisters wanted them to learn, but I just realized something. This is the first time I've ever taught anyone how out of spontaneity...." I search around for a witty reply that seems appropriate. "Well, thank you for teaching, Miss Brittany," I answer, deadpan. "Now, don't you go and start calling me Miss Brittany!" (That's what her daycare kids call her.) But she's laughing, which is what I was intending and why I said it. Shortly after this, she realizes with amazement that it's about a half hour after midnight, and like Cinderella, she needs to get home. 
     
     So, that's what happened. Maybe the start of something new, of a new adventure? Probably not, but you never know. Still, Jon said he'd pray for wisdom.
     I spent the rest of the night working on an essay, got an hour of sleep, and then took a nap at five in the evening, sleeping right through the latest  S.H.I.E.L.D. episode. Woke up at three this morning, worked on more homework, started writing this post. That's the week so far.