Turkey Tumble

Well, I was on a roll for a while, but then the writing sort of faded out again. I still fall into the same old trap all the time – the trap of feeling like I have nothing significant to write about. And sometimes, it is hard of something interesting to talk about that happened since I last wrote. However, something occurred to me the other day. I have 25+ years of experiences to draw on, and most of those 25 years passed long before I started this blog or even my Sweden journal. I have years and years worth of stories to tell! And without further ado, I thought I’d start with a brief look into my senior year of high school. This memory came back to me the other day and it took everything in me to keep myself from laughing out loud and seeming crazy to the people around me. Self-deprecating though it may be, it’s definitely a story worth telling.

Every fall, my high school’s drama department put on a children’s play. When I was a senior, I was given a part of Tanya the Singing Turkey. That’s right, a singing turkey. And let me tell you, I was excited about this. The story said that Tanya Turkey and her husband Toulouse had recently moved to the North Pole and were new to the idea of Christmas. Their neighbors (penguins, of course) came over to say hello, and Tanya and Toulouse were excited to share their new knowledge of the holiday. And so they begin to sing the most ridiculous string of fractured Christmas carols imaginable.

The lyrics were hysterical enough to be a story on their own, though unfortunately I don’t remember any of them any more. But my strongest memory of that show had nothing to do with any of the performances. It happened during a rehearsal. Our first dress rehearsal, in fact. We wanted to evoke the colorful feather patterns of a turkey while leaving the details to the children’s imaginations, so my costume consisted of an oversized tie-dyed t-shirt, bright orange wind pants, and most importantly – to this story, at least – brown and red striped toe socks.

There was one point in the show where I suddenly had to take off running and do about 4 laps around a table. (Why, you ask? Truthfully, I don’t remember the exact context. But the show was about singing turkeys. Stop asking questions.) We had rehearsed the show many many times by now, and I had never had a problem with losing my balance. But remember that this was my first time doing the show in costume, and the costume involved socks and no shoes. And the stage was rather dusty. I’ll give you a moment to form your own mental picture of what happened when I took off running.

…

That’s right. I went flying.

And I do mean FLYING. You know how usually, when you fall, you don’t remember the fall itself? All of a sudden you are just on the ground and wondering how you got there. Well this time, I got so much hang time that I remember being in the air. And while I was airborne, I can remember thinking something along the lines of “oh, socks, right…”

Hysterical laughter ensued for several minutes after that, coming from the rest of the cast as well as me. And to add insult to injury, this happened to be the day that the director had decided to video tape the show so we could critique ourselves. I lost count of how many times she played it back over the next few days.

It was embarrassing for sure, but still a moment that I look back on with fondness. It was a moment of pure, innocent, untainted humor, and my drama friends and I talked of it constantly for months until something else hysterical happened.

And it’s a memory I still carry with me, almost 7 years later. That, I truly believe, is what makes it a story worth telling.