Getting Cold Feet at the Frosty Play: Silly...Silly...Silly

Our story begins on October 5th where I was, once again, minding my own business. My friend Erin (also known as "The Bane of My Existence"), had put out feelers for volunteers to participate in her annual holiday production. Having been featured, most unglamorously, in several of these, I decided that this was my year to retire...to pass the torch to the more talented staff members who can take Erin's direction without mocking, heckling, or undermining her.

But, alas.

Annoying text message from Erin:  Ummm...I'm sorry. Did I somehow miss you signing up with me
after the faculty meeting for Frosty?

I responded with an adorable snowman picture "waving" to Erin with BOTH of its stick fingers.

Erin:  Oh! Are you raising both hands to join? Super. I'll count you in.

Fast forward to October 9th where I foolishly believed the lie my mother told me when I was nine: Just ignore her. She'll go away.

Annoying text message from Erin:  What are your feelings about villains?

Me:  Compassion...respect...a deep, relatable connection.

Erin:  Perfect! Professor Hinkle you will be!

Me:  I am not being in the play this year.

Erin:  You said that last year and, yes, you are. You will be amazing!

Fast forward to the first play practice that I purposely ignored because I had stated firmly, emphatically, and unequivocally that I was NOT going to participate this year.

PA Announcement:  Will Amy Mosiman please report to Erin's room? Amy Mosiman? Report to Erin's room or she will come and get you.

I stormed down the hall, slunk into Erin's crowded room of eager, excited actors, and sulked in the corner.

During the read-through, I couldn't find "my voice," veering uncontrollably from French to Southern to British to German. I was certain that I would be invited to leave but unfortunately, people started making requests. "Can you do Russian?" No.

Fast forward to the beginning of December where I learn that, not only did my "small" part turn out to be twenty-two lines long, I was also going to have to "leap" from a "moving train."

Wait. 

What?!?

I was assured that I would be given an opportunity to practice said death-defying feat. Yet another lie.

Fast forward to the morning on the day of the play.

While in the midst of trying to part my bangs in the middle, Professor Hinkle-style, I dropped a barrette and hit my head on the bathroom vanity as I went to stand up. Ouch! I cheered up immediately. Death, take me now, I begged, peering unhappily (and dizzily) at my very unglamorous reflection in the mirror. 

Fast forward to the drive to school the day of the play.

Okay, I thought, clutching the wheel, the head contusion didn't do me in. C'mon deer...do your thing.

Fast forward to the play.

This is a TERRIBLE idea. I read my script frantically with Hocus-Pocus the rabbit peering desperately over my shoulder. We scanned the pages like it was that shiny tri-fold life-saving brochure that no one ever reads on a plane UNTIL..."How do I make my seat into a floatation device?"..."How do I get the oxygen to flow out of that dangling apparatus?"..."Who has Frosty's hat in Scene 2?" There were video segments. Choreographed dancers. A choir. A narrator. A LOT of things to be paying attention to. Hocus and I panicked. We NEVER paid attention!!!

Things went downhill the moment I hit the stage. The cast could only stare in horror as I flailed about. I could only think about tracking that darn hat and that I would soon be leaping to my death (or, at the very least, breaking my hip) in front of a live audience of impressionable children.

My friend Eric was a masterful Frosty. Unfortunately, his head was encased in a thick layer of polyester foam with an impenetrable mask that didn't allow him to either see or hear. Afraid that he may have missed his cue (He didn't...I had jumped the gun), I "helped" him by asking him if he wanted me to jump on his back. Little Karen then climbed aboard and I was so caught up in the moment, I decided to go along for the ride.

Soon after, my friend Michelle approached with the rolling cart that served as my train. In her enthusiasm, she rammed that sucker right into my shins. Eyes wide, we stared at each other in horror. Mindful of my hot mic, she leaned forward and hissed, "Don't say it," as I drew in a deep breath and prayed that maybe I'd suffered a fractured fibula. No such luck. Michelle heaved me on the cart and quickly rolled me out onto the stage. I was poised as some sort of lumpy, base-jumping frog. As we careened toward the 1/4 inch thick mat (Cheese cloth would have offered me better padding), I readied myself for my stunt. In my mind, it was a masterful movie-style leap. In reality, it was more of a limp log-roll.

Praise God, the end of the play had arrived. My confrontation with Santa consisted of my Superintendent and myself staring, wide-eyed at one another, as we engaged in a warped and dangerous dueling banjos-style improvisation as we both battled to remember our lines. When he was in the midst of an impressive Hamlet-type off-script soliloquy with no end in sight, "Little Karen" (who actually KNEW her lines) and I glanced worriedly at one another. Unsure of what to do during his monologue, I began yawning, looking at my watch, and miming gater hand at him. All was well at the end though, when he majestically boarded his "sleigh" (the hallway zamboni) and whisked our top-heavy Frosty off safely to the North Pole. We all breathed a sigh of relief. It was over. And nobody died.

Fast forward to me at home, safely tucked into my comfy chair, trying to put this nightmare behind me.

Annoying text from Erin: I didn't get a chance to tell you that you went above and beyond for your role and you were amazing. 

Clearly, she is both blind and delusional. Did she sneak out of the auditorium and attend another play? Did she hit her head on her bathroom vanity this morning picking up a barrette? Had this all just been a bad dream?

I did not respond to her text. My mother used to tell me that if I ignore an annoying person, they will eventually go away.

 

Here, pear, everywhere

Let's just say that, this year, I made some hard-core fruit investments during my school's annual fundraiser. I can't explain what happened. I must have just been plum-crazy or just not peeling well when I decided to purchase my body weight in produce. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen that episode of "Everyone Loves Raymond" and, believe me, I can relate to Marie's exasperated exclamation of "What are we going to do with all this fruit?" No. I do not "put up" fruit. I don't can, cake, or cobbler fruit. I don't dice, dehydrate, or decorate with fruit. For goodness sake, I barely EAT fruit.

But there it was. 

A GIGANTIC box of pears. Was I envisioning a shoe box? I certainly didn't picture this cargo container. I don't even like pears. I peeked fearfully inside. Yup. There they were...individually wrapped like little pear presents. 

Well...it was clear that this little problem was not going to disa-pear so I put on my coat, grabbed my bag, and then, being sure to lift with my legs, hoisted my box of pears into my arms.  BIG mistake. I staggered beneath the weight of a zillion pears, listing to the left before slamming into the wall, Three-Stooges-style. For some reason, my instinct was to sacrifice my spine along with my dignity for a fruit that ranks 11th, AFTER mangos, for pete's sake according to https://firstwefeast.com/eat/ranking-of-fruits/  which included this dead-on description as "overripe pears taste like someone pre-chewed the fruit and then stuffed it back into an oblong skin sack." My friend and next-door-classroom neighbor, Kelly, came to my rescue if, by rescue, you count hysterical laughter and then larceny. After Kelly lightened my load by eight pairs, she alerted the masses to my dilemma. "I've never seen you eat a pear," my friend, Geri, remarked, observing my plethora of pears. "I don't like pears," I told her. She nodded. "Naturally. So of course you would spend your life's savings on an orchard's worth." 

It was decided that I would have to Johnny Cash my way out of this problem...carrying my pears out "one piece at a time." I loaded my bag with a dozen wrapped pears and headed home, my heart heavy as I contemplated the zillions I'd left behind. 

Brad was delighted with my delivery. "That's a lot of pears," he admitted, "but I can eat twelve pears, no problem." How on earth was I going to tell him? Was this grounds for divorce? 

Suddenly, my phone rang. It was my friend Rachel. "Amy, I just wanted you to know that the kids made a fruit delivery for you after you left." Melon-choly, I slid to the floor. Happily crunching his pear, my husband looked at me. "What's wrong?" 

So...much...fruit.

Rachel reassured me that her son would carry my fruit freight out to my truck tomorrow. "Rachel, we need a fork-lift. Adam can't carry that."

The next day, Adam...who is forever stuck in my mind in his former-4th grade-form...arrived and effortlessly picked up my crate of pears like a black-tied waiter carrying a tray of champagne at a celebrity gala. I quickly provided him with a description of my truck and he laughed. "Mrs. Mosiman, we filmed a video together with you dressed like a bee, driving the Titan while my friends and I pushed it down the road singing a parody of Be Our Guest." He delivered this soliloquy effortlessly while carrying a thousand pounds of pears. Usually, Adam and I only talk about the sandwich that he ate for lunch. He is passionate about his sandwiches. 

Brad carried in the bountiful boxes when I got home. Our kitchen had transformed into a cornucopia. I wondered how hard it was to make those hats that the Chiquita Banana Lady wears. Those would make fun and unique gifts for the holiday. An edible arrangement that you could wear! Why, oh why, did I buy so much fruit?  I must have succumbed to pear-pressure.

  
 

Keeping the spark alive

"I'm going to clean up the garage," my husband said, attempting (and failing) to maintain eye contact with me. There was NO WAY I was going down there. Two deer had been butchered and processed in that space over the last three days. It was like a horror movie down there. To enter my garage at this time would be the equivalent to first, splitting up an established group to seek out a suspiciously missing person and second, going down into a dark basement to check out a questionable noise. 

So yeah, I let him go...without me. With minimal guilt. 

But soon, I realized that I'd never heard the garage door open. Where was he? A quick inventory out my windows soon spotted him by our car, huddled over the engine beneath the open hood. Shoot. Moral quandary. Do I pretend that I'd never seen him and retreat back under the warmth of my comfy covers or do I venture out into the cold to offer my usual incompetent assistance, undoubtedly, triggering a stress-induced spat? Darn it!

The first thing I noticed was the concerning lack of jumper-cables. I immediately deduced several things. One, our jumper cables were in the truck we'd just dropped off to be serviced and two, Brad must have been in the process of making sure the car would start so I'd be able to go to work the next morning with no fuss. Now I felt ashamed. Good thing I'd come out here.

"Here, hold this," Brad said gruffly. I refrained from reminding him to use his manners as I looked, with some alarm, at the brown household extension cord with exposed wires that he'd wound around the car's dead battery and had connected to one of Brad's many hoarded back-up batteries. I gripped the cord tentatively as Brad hopped in the car to give it a try. Nothing. Was it my imagination that I could feel a surge of lightning-strength electricity surging through the wires? Brad returned to peer back under the hood. I prayed my usual prayer that he would suddenly spot a loose plug. "Golly, look at that," he would exclaim, firmly pushing it back into the receptacle as the car suddenly leaped into life. But no...instead he inspected my grip on his death-wire and deemed it unsatisfactory. "Pull it taut," he instructed as I mumbled, "That's what she said," under my breath. 

He got behind the wheel again as I watched my knitted mitten start to smoke. As the flesh on my fingers began developing more seared marks then a grilled steak,  I debated my options of marital disharmony or second degree burns. When the car again refused to cooperate, Brad returned. "It's burning me," I complained. He huffed, rolled his eyes, dramatically grabbed his flammable wires and stomped off. Were we done? Done with the project? Done with the marriage? "Erin would be happy to pick me up tomorrow," I yelled after him. 

Before I knew it, he was back. Goody. This time he held an industrial type of extension cord. Great.

Round two.

I could feel the sizzle in my toenails.

Suddenly, I was demoted to "Try-Starting-the-Car Duty."

Thank God.

I resisted the impulse to tell him that I was cold as I waited for his barked orders to "Try it again." I wish the radio worked. I wondered how Brad would feel if I asked to pop in the house to grab my phone.

Finally, the car sputtered to life.

""We're gonna let it run for awhile," Brad told me. I suppressed a giggle at his use of the royal "We." I watched him gather up his supplies and walk into the garage. I decided that it would be best for our relationship if we gave each other a little space so I returned to my comfy covers. It was the least I could do.