Aurora's Blog

I mentioned in part one of my last story that I had a little side story, and here it is.

I was cast in a one person musical my senior year in high school.

We’d had some people getting leads as juniors (or sophomores), and many people seemed to be keeping an eye out for them. But, (I’ve actually mentioned this before) in as far as I know, in the perception of many, I came out of nowhere – which was kind of jarring, like, “hey, who’s this girl?!”

Here’s the weirdest thing about it all. All I ever wanted was a lead. I sang my heart out at every scene night. The whole world (or at least my little world), knew I wanted to be front and center on that stage. Yet, I don’t know that I ever really believed I actually deserved my own show.

(Oof, vulnerable, weird, sappy sentence right there, huh?)

I always kind of thought maybe the theater team was just throwing me a bone, like, “Hey, you do a crazy amount of work for us. You wanna sing? All right, we’ll let you sing.” (They never did anything to make me think that. I think it was more of a in my own head kind of thing.)

But I think for the first time during all this party set-up stuff, I really started to believe they did the show because they thought I’d be good in it.

When I saw my teacher at her house, my senior year’s photos happened to be the ones on the floor. I picked up the collage from the one person musical. She said (in what I took to be a loving voice), “your show. That was the only time in my 40 years that I did a one person musical.”

And the fact that she said it with such fondness in her voice, I took it to think she had fond memories of it, and that perhaps I was special that she did that show with me.

Later, while we were setting up the party, I was talking with a member of her team. My show came up. I said, “thank you again for doing that.” And he said, “Don’t thank me. It was a show I’d wanted to do, and when you were a senior, I knew we could. It wasn’t a favor.”

And that meant so much to me. I don’t know that I can even put my feelings into words, really. But, when I was a freshman, I looked up to the seniors so much. They might as well have been Tony Award nominees in my eyes.

And of course, we don’t need to compare me to them. (I don’t want to. I’m not them and we don’t need to (especially because they are awesome).) But, when I moved up to being a senior, I still felt like me. It was hard to imagine that maybe someone thought I was talented in the way I thought those seniors were talented.

And while I’ll never really know if I’d be mentioned by my teacher in the same breath as some of the great talents to come out of my school, I really felt last weekend that perhaps I’d been more than a great assistant who sang. I’d been a great singer/actress who assisted. And that really warmed my heart.

(I know this was more of a personal realization/pat on the back than a story or maybe something a reader would care about. But, it just mattered a whole lot to me. So, I wanted to write a little post about it…)