Confessions of an Ex-Teenage Drama Queen

People don’t like it when I sing in public.
Probably because I forgot how to hum about eight years ago after suffering minor brain damage during a tragic water polo incident, so when I sing, I have no choice but to sing as loudly as my poor little girly lungs allow. It’s NOT my fault! I have a doctor’s note!
I won’t lie to you, though, sometimes I will go through an entire glorious day and everything will be going my way, but I won’t feel satisfied until I’ve sung a little Barbara Streisand. It’s not like I’m some pro or that I could ever sing enough to put bread on the table, but not having music in my life makes me antsy.
Okay, okay, you’ve probably guessed by now that this is leading up to some awkward confession. Like that I want to drop all of my dreams of getting promoted to 4th columnist to live a life on the road as a singing telegram girl. You know, like it’s your mom’s birthday and you forgot to get her something so you call me up and I show up in some wacky costume and stick her name into some awesome Cher song? No, that’s not what I’m confessing. Well, not today, at least. I’ll save it for next week’s column.
Ah, here goes:
I miss high school theatre.
Not High School Musical. I really had enough of that nonsense after I realized that Zac Efron wears more mascara than his girlfriend.
And I don’t miss high school. I mean, it was great, but after being voted Most Likely to be the Neighborhood Cat Lady, I felt like high school and I had spent way too much time together and it was most definitely time to part ways.
No, I miss having a place to go after sitting through hours of classes where I could belt my brains out and no one gave me weird looks. I miss having an excuse to put on an old musty dress and a ridiculous accent! Not to mention, performing in high school was the only time anyone would leave me alone with a microphone. Oy vey!
I can usually spot people in my classes who feel the same way as I do. Sometimes they slip into a Russian accent while answering a question or they put just a little too much feeling into reading a passage from The Nicomachean Ethics out loud.
Actually, I’ve been thinking (dangerous as that is), and I’m pretty sure everyone is missing something and it’s not just the stage at Quince Orchard High School. The girl that sits next to me in English class tap dances under her desk during lectures on Chaucer. I’ve definitely heard someone humming Les Mis in the architecture building and I totally caught my nursing major friend writing poetry on her Biology notes the other day.
It’s kind of bittersweet, isn’t it? We can’t have it all. We can do anything but not everything. No one has enough time in their life, much less their day, to write a bestselling novel, earn a PhD, and star in the Broadway production of Shrek all at once. And if anyone does somehow have enough time to do all of that, then they have no friends. And they can stick their bestselling book where the sun don’t shine.
Seriously, though, how can we get close to having it all without completely abandoning our dreams of getting into grad school? Do we have to give up our joys to follow our passions? Are we all too focused?
But we have to be. Right?
On the other hand, if you work hard, you deserve to play hard. If you used to be president of the knitting club in high school, do not be ashamed to whip those needles out in your dorm’s common room. Are you sick of just reminiscing about being star of the tennis team? You don’t have to have a jersey to play! Get out there and kick some butt, champ! Remember how interpretive dance used to calm you down before a big test? It’s okay to dance even if you are not planning on becoming a professional dancer. It’s okay to paint if you’re not the next Picasso, study French if you don’t plan on visiting Paris anytime soon, and it is most definitely okay to sing out, even if you’re not the next Julie Andrews.
Because, honestly, if it weren’t okay, we would all be miserable.
Ah, I feel so much better.