Flashback

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. ~Maya Angelou, Gather Together in My Name

This past Thursday I had the pleasure of attending our local high school musical, West Side Story, with my two older children, Sam and Zach and my mother.  I make a point of attending their musicals every Fall as I think it is a good thing to support and am amazed every year at how talented our local youth can be.

This year however I was even more excited than normal.  See this is the 3rd time our high school has performed this particular musical, with the very first time being when I was a Junior in High School, way back in Fall of 1988.  

Wow!  Crazy that it was that long ago.  I'm not kidding, I think I was able to recite pretty much the entire dialogue and music the other night while I sat there and observed from the audience.  I find it crazy how some things in life I forget almost immediately but others stay in my head for what seems like forever.

Zach was very intrigued by the musical and was asking a lot of questions about it and although he knew I played the part of Anita when we did it, he wanted to find out if anybody else he knew played any of the other parts.  So..with that I got out one of my old photo albums full of high school mementos and pictures and gave him a tour.  I'll admit, I did forget who played some of the other parts and it made me look back in time.

Lisa (Muench) Kelling and I playing the parts of Maria and Anita.

Andy Beger and I as Bernardo & Anita

Multiple people during the dance scene.

Lieutenant Schrank and Officer Krupke talking to the Jets.

Bernardo, Tony (Chris Maleug) and Riff (Joel Hammen) during the "war council".

Members of the Jets, John Morgan, Scott Wetor and Brian Holtz

During the photo album tour I had to stop and wonder where some of these people are now, quite a few of them are still in this area with families of their own now and there is one girl from my class who unfortunately passed away in a car accident a few years ago.  It's sad how life continues to change all the time, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.  But each and every day we grow as people and learn from our past, or at least we should.

I look back on my experience in these high school musicals with a huge smile on my face.  Man did we all have fun doing this.  And for some reason, this particular musical brought out a lot of different people for the tryouts than musicals in previous years had so it was awesome to have such an interested and enthusiastic cast to showcase their talents we didn't even know some of them had.  Music was truly my refuge at this time and still is on most days.

I had a sassy character and here I am trying to prove my point that America is the best place to be.

The fight scene between the Jets and the Sharks.

The Office Krupke song.  The kids favorite part of the musical.

More Office Krupke.

My duet with Maria after my boyfriend Bernardo was stabbed and killed

The ending scene when Tony gets shot.

I am thankful that my kids seem to have this same interest in music that I have.  When writing this blog it occured to me that Sam has been in more musicals in her life already than I have.  She has done 5 with Lakeshore Productions already and was also in the Jr. High School musical Annie this past school year.  Kids just seem to have a lot more opportunities now than we did then.

It's time to put my high school photo album back in the closet until the next time one of the kiddos shows interest in what Mom was like years ago.  So far they seem to think I was an okay "teenager" for my time.

And as far as the 2011 version of West Side Story.  It was the BOMB!  Seriously, they did an unbelievable job.  When leaving the theater though my Mom did lean over and whisper in my ear "You were better as Anita", I think she's just biased a tad :)