Baby Irving

Hey hey hey, it's some more really old stuff that I never posted here! This is from the early '01 era.

Since Thursday, I have lost my student id, my glasses, and a book I checked out of the liberry. I used to be so proud of the way I didn't lose things. I used to say to my friends, "If I ever lose this here cotton-pickin' wallet, I'll give you all the pig ears you can stomach!" But then some voodoo temptress put the hex on my not-losing-stuff skills and made me go all Losey McGee. So, if you have any human organs you need kept track of, don't give them to me. CAUSE I'LL LOSE EM!! Ha!>

In ninth grade, I took theater because I didn't want the metal shop kids to stab me. As our final project in the theater class, we had to put on a class play. The play was, without question, the dumbest play ever; it made Tiger Beat magazine look like the Brothers Karamazov. I can't remember the specifics, but think Saved by the Bell set in the old west, as written by a group of delusional schizophrenics.

I was supposed to be the comic relief in the form of the grizzled old Assayer. That would've worked, except the lines weren't funny and I'm a terrible actor. The theater teacher was a step ahead, though. Her great idea was for me to act like Steve Urkel so no one paid attention to that part. Okay, sounds great so far. Well, one of the characters in the play was supposed to be my son. The guy assigned to that part was the school hoodlum; I think he was in his early 40s. In our only previous conversation, he told me that he killed a guy by running him over in a jet ski. All of those factors led me to believe that he wouldn't really get into the production; boy, did I have another thing coming.

During rehearsals, he was feeling it. He wasn't going crazy or anything, but he was definitely putting some work into the whole thing. In a way, it was kind of heart-warming, like all this delinquent needed to bring his life around was a part in a really crappy play. The day of the production, he stepped it up a level. When he took the stage, he was like Dustin Hoffman, living his part as Baby Irving. It was a little more than anyone could deal with. He progressively got more and more wound up in his role, and soon he was like Robin Williams out there. No one else would participate, and he was making up lines and hamming things up. I thought he was going to start crying at the end of it; it was seriously disturbing. I think everyone in the class wanted to make fun of him, but all of us pictured him coming back to class the next day with his killer jet ski. Instead, I took the safe route: wait several years and then take him down on an unpopular website. Game set match , Powell.

Posted by Cody at February 27, 2005 6:57 PM