Fiberglass and Candy Canes

The first time I ever tried “dippin’ sum chaw,” I was out on the town with a good friend of over 15 years. We had a rather mellow night, taking down only a couple beers and burgers at The Cherry Cricket before deciding to head elsewhere. Once in the truck, Tom flicked the tin a few times, unloaded a beetle-sized pinch of tobacco, and packed his lower lip, resembling a bulldog with a severe under-bite. I still remember his white teeth glistening through the loose tobacco and the darkness of the night. “Oh, yeah!” he exclaimed.

Since he went out of state for college, I hadn’t been there for the momentous occasion of when he first dipped into the Kentucky bubble gum. I can only imagine it was at a huge tailgate party, one of the many that started at 8 am, as U of Montana prepared to battle MSU in a rivalry only appreciated by those whose college actually had a football team. I could only live vicariously as he and his posse would paint their chests crimson and silver on a lovely, autumn, 20° Montana morn’, drink a pint or two, and stumble into the bushes for a pre-game nap.

“Man. This is the good $#!t,” he said. “Heyheyhey. Wanna dip? It’s good for ya.” I agreed, supposing it could be considered a whole grain. I took a little pinch, similar to the amount you’d use when lightly salting a mushroom. “No, no, no. Really get in there, so you can taste it.” Sure, I thought. After all, I did skip the bun at dinner. I squeezed a bit more and could feel the cool, damp, shredded leaves between my fingers. Being a contacts wearer, I was confident I could hold my lip open as I shoved the goop into my mouth. I of course gave myself a nice brown streak across my teeth and down my chin trying to

make a Sandlot joke.

“Doshznt dis shtuf cud yur mowf op-in?” I asked, as I cleaned my face in the side mirror.

“Eh, it’ll cut ya a little bit. The fiberglass is what makes it good.”

Tom was always a smart guy and I wasn’t let down when my very minor beer buzz began swelling, and it soon felt like I had drunk 5 or 6 drinks.

“Holy $#!t!” I mumbled. “Man! This is like a whole night of drinks in one little dollop!”

“Hell yeah! Kodiak Mint!”

It tasted sweet and familiar. It reminded me of the yuletide warmth of childhood, as I sat there watching myself in the truck’s mirror swishing around shreds of candy cane.

The initial swell unfortunately increased. Not to seem like a wimp, when he wasn’t looking, I pulled almost half of the chaw wedge from my mouth and nonchalantly tossed it out the window. My head was swooning even more, and I tightly grasped my head trying to imagine it didn’t feel like we were doing donuts as we sped down the street.

I grabbed the whole wad of it and threw it as far as I could, spitting out every little tobacky leave-behind in my mouth. I wanted to puke, but really tried to play it off, even keeping up the spitting facade. When he would do a spit take in an old Coke can, I’d do the same, only trying to tongue the rest of it out. I don’t remember the rest of the ride to the house, but I do remember immediately rushing to the bathroom for toothpaste. Unfortunately, the tube of Colgate shared a similar bouquet of mint that the good people of Kodiak preferred, and that was out. I never thought I’d prefer the burning eucalyptus taste of Listerine to anything.

During the coming months, Tom and his chew friends became quite the connoisseurs of hockey puck-shaped cigarettes. Cherry. Apple. Mint. I was soon exposed to a variety of scents that, at first, really seemed to freshen up the place. One Sunday morning after a late-night BBQ, I awoke to the amazing aroma of freshly baked peach pie. I scoured the house for it, searching the oven and every countertop and window sill in the house. I immediately fell ill when I located a red plastic party cup half full of the flavored swill.  For having broken my nose in a few places, I still had an extremely sensitive sense of smell.

In the summer of 2005, I embarked on a journey which would put me on my current life path. I auditioned, interviewed, and accepted the invitation to work at a repertory theatre and youth theatre summer camp in Silverton, CO. I had spoken with fellow theatre friends who had done the program before, and ultimately received the same answer to how it was: You’ll work your ass off, but it’s amazing.

Working one’s ass off doesn’t quite come close to the experience. It’s one of those scenarios where you don’t want to frighten the person, so you understate it. Not that you hate the individual, but rather, it’s something all people should experience.

“Nah man, you can meet some great women on Craigslist. Definitely recommend it. You should give it a shot.”

The other counselors were fortunately actors I either went to school with or had met months prior at a theatre conference. This got me off to a good start. If we were going to be working our asses off, I was glad it’d be with good people. We quickly got to work, and our schedule would go something like this:

We would arrive at the camp by 8am. We would get started by corralling the kids while balancing our mugs of coffee and begin teaching them some theatre games. Then we’d give them handfuls of broken goldfish crackers, and take them over to the school for the field and playground. We’d usually be outside for lunch, and several parents would come by to bring their kids food and check in.

Except for the one meth-head mom, they were all fantastic. One day in particular, I remember saying hi to her, then turning away to watch some of the kids play football. As I was watching a pretty nifty kick return, my head was panning to the right, and the game in front of me was suddenly blocked by a freckly and pale-faced woman with thinning blonde hair in mid-conversation with me. “…And then he just fell down and went boom, so that’s why you gotta watch him on the monkey bars.” She spoke with such a lazy speech that all you could really hear were the vowels and the blurred consonants. I focused my stare into her eyes, looked around to make sure she was in fact talking to me, glanced back at the football game, and back at her. She had arrived 10 minutes ago and hadn’t budged. I had missed a huge chapter of the kid’s life entitled, “How My Son Continually F*&ks Himself Up,” or more appropriately, “My Kid Went Boom.” I’ve worked this character into several improv scenes.

After lunch we’d head back to the theatre for more acting games, a rehearsal period for Annie, some improv, and call it a day. Parents would straggle over and get their kids by about 3, at which time we’d get a quick break before doing three or more of the following: read scripts; memorize lines; script analysis; character analysis; collect costumes, props, or set pieces; paint; set build; pass out flyers; and if it was a weeknight, have a good ol’ fashioned rehearsal. This would bring our day to a close around 10pm, at which time we were “free to go, but there is more work to do.”

Crawling into bed around midnight wasn’t uncommon for the duration of the summer, and we would scoff at those who worked a measly 60 or 80 hour work week. Ours would cap around 100. On the nights we had performances, it was fairly regular that either prior to or after the show, we would have a rehearsal for the other show we’d be running in rep. Looking back, this gave me the theatre schedule that I would learn to love, loathe, pine for, and appreciate.

Marianne Fearn was the owner of the theatre and our artistic director. Not only was she a good 40 years our senior, but she was putting in as many hours as we were. I had finally met someone whom you could believe when she said she swore off the fame and money side of performing and did it for the love.

In our first read-through, we were discussing character development when Marianne very casually mentioned the name “Uta” as she was telling a story of a good friend who played Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” on Broadway. The name caused my memory to churn. I was at the point in my young acting career where I wanted to learn everything at that moment and read anything on acting all at once, and the name Uta stuck out. I was asked a question about my character in the play, and quickly forgot about the name.

Days later, it came up again, and we all got curious. It turned out that we were now working with a woman who had taught and worked professionally with a woman who was known as a legitimate acting guru, affecting 1000s of careers. We then habitually wrote down everything Marianne said about anything. I even have 3 pages of detailed notes on how to go on a nature hike, because that’s what was asked of us for one rehearsal.

Marianne was a very in-tune person, and that is how she approached acting. Knowing yourself and your senses forced you to be grounded and to layer a character on to you, rather than build something of nothing. When she asked us to explore our character, if the script asked us to take a bite of an apple, she would have us know the color, size, firmness, and smell of said invisible apple, as well as a memory that we may have had while smelling it. Mmmm…our house after college game day.

I was blown away. No more would it be a blithe “and my character picks up an apple, and la-da-da…” Everything was something. So when Marianne announced that our rehearsal for the next day would be to go on a hike in the mountains, either alone or with one other person, I was much obliged to her. Not just to get out of the theatre for a night, but you know, for the process. Our notes – to use your senses and really be a part of nature. And no talking for one hour. Being in a fairly secluded mountain town gave us this perfect opportunity, and I can still smell the cool, crisp stream as it flowed through the fallen brush of pine and dampened earth. This one rehearsal opened my heart, mind, and senses to almost everything.

That summer gave me theatre experience, teaching credentials, a broken heart, life-long bonds, an appreciation of all things theatre, a heightened sense of smell, and the knowledge of who I am. The experience was emotionally, physically, and psychologically the hardest, most dramatic, most theatrical and life-fulfilling few months that I’ve gone through. And I absolutely loved it.

Tales of a First-Grade Something

I remember my first brush with writing fame. I was the most popular kid in the 1^st grade for one spectacular February day, because my story was read aloud by the teacher to the entire class. This was the same school year during which I told my first joke. Well, maybe not joke, but riff. You could say I was riffing.

As curious and studious 7-year-olds do, we had spent the school year thus far preening to get the status of “Favorite Student.” As we were doing our usual writing warm-up on a bitterly cold New York morning, a student trying so casually to look smart in his moon boots while holding the end of his glasses in his mouth asked, “Miss, have you ever read the book…um…um…I forgot.” Amateur. You fell for the classic blunder, Mark “Who Always Smelled like Bologna” Donald! You can’t drop some obscure title as a 1^st grader to a teacher when your entire library consists of Goodnight Moon and Ralph S. Mouse. Mrs. Barveinous, who was always quick, replied, “Oh…good book.” Ha! She got you good, you little twerp! I thought. Then I chimed in, so eloquently, so cavalier, with such subtlety, you’d think that I’d been watching Johnny Carson or The Wonder Years for my entire TV-viewing life. “Who’s it by?” I riffed, getting the biggest laugh from all 20 first graders and Mrs. B, who nearly spit out her coffee, capping a wonderful triangle of discourse in front of the class. Ha! Top that, Mark. He tried. He really did.

One day, our octagon-shaped terrarium that had housed several caterpillars, began housing cocoons instead. Some kids were perplexed. “Oh my gosh! Mrs. B, Where are all the cap-a-tillers!?” one girl, with a white kitten on her pink sweatshirt, exclaimed as she was picking her nose. “The caT-eR-pillars have tucked themselves into cocoons that they’ve made. Then they’ll turn into beautiful butterflies. Now go wash your hands, Betsy.” Mark and I made Dirty Harry faces at each other, turning our excited, bright eyes into small, fierce squints. “Make a move, vato,” I thought, as I turned my head slightly, presenting him with the floor. “Let’s see what you got,” I said with my hands out to the side, like I was in a dance battle. He quickly jumped at the chance.

“Oh, cool. The coke-oons are see-proof.” Oh. Crap. This kid just said a word and added “proof” to it. I began to sweat. My eyes quickly began searching for something. Anything. I held my b-boy pose, but began teetering.  This kid. This jerk-faced kid just pulled out some vocabulary. What object from around the room, or verb, could I add some other word to and make it fancy? Just when I was about to pass out from the pressure, Mrs. B came in. “Actually, you can see through the cocoon. It’s transparent. See-proof is not actually a real word, Mark. But good for you for trying.” Yeah, Mark. Good for you. Mwa-hahahaha. This was a big moment in my life. It wasn’t just a win or rise in my own stock as the favorite student. It was the exact time when I learned that sometimes you didn’t have to do anything to win. You could let your cocky opponent fall on his own face. This was huge. Mark’s eyes quickly fell to the floor in shame. Had he a sword, I think he would’ve Hara-kiri’d himself on our reading rug. I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t need to chime in; I knew I had already won. I didn’t want something like pity to rain on my victory parade. From then on, I gloat-proofed my victories.

The next day, Mark must’ve been still sick from the Battle of Wits, because he didn’t make it to school. In fact, I didn’t see him again for weeks, until I saw him crouching behind a blue minivan in his driveway. I could spot his too-big-for-him cowboy boots half a block away and pointed him out to my babysitter, Tracey. She told me I should go say hi, but I didn’t quite know how to tell her I didn’t really like the kid. After some half-hearted conversation about He-Man (I was just going through the motions. Like I could ever talk to this guy about The Power of Greyskull), I was finally able to get out of there. I never did find out why he was crouching behind the van, but he did say he was moving back to Oklahoma. As we walked down the street, Tracey asked if I had bologna in my pocket.

For V-Day, we continued the school tradition of passing out perforated Valentine’s cards and candy to everyone. I had gone with the Alvin and The Chipmunks motif and very thoughtfully chose candy hearts with those engraved messages on them. Choosing which heart belonged to whom was tough. Those little doozies can either say everything, or not enough, and to not raise the hopes of some girl who was semi-afraid of capatillars, I had spent quite a bit of time on them. When we finished, Mrs. B asked us to do a creative writing piece, the only requirement being we had to entitle it, “The Runaway Valentine.” Gold star for this guy. Some kids didn’t even know what “runaway” meant. I did. My older sister suggested I had done it plenty of times already. With Mark out of the way for good, I felt confident.

I wrote a story, complete with drawings of a miniature heart with arms and legs running away from a mailbox, because he didn’t like the fact that he was a gesture, rather than having someone who loved him, and wanted a Valentine of his own. Then there was mass confusion between the two characters I so creatively entitled, “Him and Her.” The rising action climaxed with a fine denouement of Him and Her deciding to make Valentines together on the porch. Had I even heard of Nabokov at that point, I’m sure he would’ve felt insecure. I turned in my masterpiece and began rocking back in my chair, looking around at all the little squirts still writing. I was busy stacking up my candy hearts by color and tone, while they were awkwardly wiping the eraser crumbs off their desks and savagely looking up "runaway" in the dictionary.

 

Then something happened. I plopped the front legs of my chair down and thought that I was so literal with the title that my DOW would plummet. I hated it. I wanted my paper back. I wanted to write about someone who hated their Valentine because she was smothering him, and decided to run away out of claustrophobia. Just then, Mrs. B pulled it from the top of her stack with a, “Hmm,” and said, “I would like to share my favorite story with you all right now. Everybody, put your pencils down and come to the reading rug.” Just for good measure, I did a quick check for any blood stains and I sat criss-cross-apple-sauce as she read my epic tale.