. . . and then there was pickle.

This is one of the funniest and most tragic stories I have from my life as a professional actor, and what I hope to do by sharing it – aside from making you laugh is to show the value of perspective and how a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

One of the ways I put my wife through Law School was by working at one of our big LORT houses (union theatre) in their children’s series. Throughout the years I have played more ridiculous characters, and put on more fur and tails than I would care to mention, but it was a great job. We performed 12 shows a week, Tuesday through Sunday, 10 am and noon matinees during the week - for every school bussed in from a two county radius.

I was at the bar by 3. – with a pretty decent paycheck.

This is the story of Pecos Bill and The Ghost Stampede. I was playing ‘Pa’. Every performance began with a spotlight that came up on me as I sat on the edge of the stage and strummed a guitar recanting the history of Texas.

Now, when you’re doing back-to-back shows you’re generally running around like a chicken with your head cut off between them trying to re-set props and costumes – cuz you’ve got like 15 minutes before they start to seat the next group.

When a 10:00 show starts late, cuz of traffic or poorly planned bathroom breaks or just sheer incompetence it puts a damper on the second show starting on time.

This is the case of the day in question. We were running late. Technically we were in ‘act fast, go home early’ mode – which happened more than I’d like to admit. When we finished the first show – we were supposed to be starting the second one.

No good.

Thus begins the worst experience of my professional career.

There was one piece of information which the stage manager neglected to pass on to us before we walked out to start the second show - a half-hour late . . . this was a special needs class. This was important information to have.

We were all already in a simmering state of malcontent to begin the show.

And then as I finally started the show, I was immediately struck by a kid sitting in the front row off to my left who was talking, and I dont mean whispering - this kid was putting on a show of his own. I couldn’t make him out completely because he was just out of my spotlight and far enough down to where I didn’t want to look over at him, to give him any more focus than he was already taking on his own.

Now, you have to remember – at this point I just thought he was another randomly bad kid. So I was barreling through my monologue just focusing on being louder than him. It was at the point that he got up on his knees to talk to the person behind him - that I could take no more, stopped my speech to snap my fingers at him and said, “hey! I’m over here.”

. . . the entire audience did a unified gasp - as I, was apparently the only person in the room (or perhaps the county) that did not know that this child was blind and had Tourettes.

Yeah . . .I stopped a play to yell at a blind kid with tourettes.

The good news is that I was not the only cast member to fall down on this one. Later on during the show there was a moment when Pecos was supposed to have thrown cactus seeds and the cacti sprung up out of nowhere all at once. To do so an actress pulled a ground row (fake row of cactus that were laying across the lip of the stage) up by a rope.

Apparently the kid I had abused earlier wasn’t the only blind child in the audience because as ‘Ma’ pulled the rope, the two red tipped canes, which were lying across the front of the stage, went flying end over end into the audience.

We were done. As a cast we had reached the end of our ability to act and deal reasonably with the fact that we were horrible, horrible people.

At the end of every show we had a talkback section where we fielded questions from the audience before their busses arrived. We were in bad shape by the time we got to curtain, and really should have cancelled this one, but our stage manager decided to push onward.

Now in all of my years of doing these - I know who to ask questions of, and so did the person fielding them that day. The problem was that only one child raised their hand, and it was perhaps the last child on earth that you would have wanted to raise their hand – even more that the blind kid with tourettes. This girl had a sullen psychotic gleam in her eye that you could read from the fifth row, and yet she sat – the only arm in air.

Michael reluctantly called on her and this is what she said –

“My mommy’s in a deep . . . deep . . . sleep.”

. . . thank you, goodbye.

We were at the bar by 3:30, and that was my worst working day as a professional actor.

The reason I tell this story is to show the importance of communication, and setting realistic expectations for the situations we find ourselves and our children in during our life journeys. That was not the worst group of kids I ever performed for by a long stretch, but the situation that led up to it; as well as the lack of information that was given to us and to them (don’t lean your canes on the stage, ask questions about the show) set us all up for failure.

Childhood is a guided path, and if The Pickle is going to be able to healthily deal with the uncomfortable circumstances that we all must encounter – it is my job to prepare her for the play by communicating expectations.

True, life is more of a constant improvisation - but the premise is the same. We, as parents, have a duty to prepare our kids for the reality that the show isn’t always about you, and give them as much information as they could possibly need to play their role.

We are all the stage managers of the show that is childhood, and it’s important to remember that there are other jobs besides starting on time.

Pickle’s Papa

p.s As a side note: A couple of weeks later as I was walking from my dressing room to our stage - I crossed paths with your standard burly Union Stage Hand - whom I had never met. As our path's crossed he nodded, smiled and asked me, "yell at and 'tards lately?" . . . just to show the depth and breadth of the level of offensive I had actually reached. I dont think I have ever done anything so completely demoralizing as that.