Did an Out this evening it was easier than the In. In fact quite a bit so, so much that despite having less people, taking less time, and being colder it still wasn’t so bad. At home I followed links, checked blogs and ended up wondering about a theme park I worked for. Some how I found a video of the new Christmas show which is a remount of the first Christmas show I did there. No faux PC happy holidays inclusiveness here. An example of a Christmas show that wouldn’t bow to pressure to include a Menorah or leave out a bit of religion in favor of a generic Happy Holidays message.
Yet I found myself missing it. Recall, I tell myself, it could have been me working on it instead of the run I took. (and regret) Me behind the chair and receiving the briefcase and insisting on doing my old track instead of being forced into a new one but mistakes are made and I just have to deal with that. In the video I caught the chair move from SL to center and than quickly upstage and I wanted to know if the hand had the spots telling him to shimmy like the soloist or if there were snacks left by secret santa and if a worry about tripping during the dash into the wing lingered in the hind brain just before starting to run.
It’s not high art and I wasn’t a great stagehand but it was a good time and many small things came back making me want to return and do it again: complaining about the doves, racing center to move the building and falling, the subtle adjustment of the snowflakes so the video was centered on them, the time the scrim tore, maintaining the foggers and when the tank blew a seal, sitting on the chair the time it rained watching movies waiting to see if we would get to go home, stealing a Christmas tree from props, drinking beer whilst wearing a giant sombrero in Fullerton, discovering Man4Sale was afraid of the snowmen and using it against him, when a couple folks from production made plywood trees for our Christmas party, when people would sit ‘below cracker level’, and how it was such a great experience even on the days it wasn’t.
Still it wasn’t to last. I was getting worried working there. Worried that it’d become my life. That in a decade I’d still be a part time tech, living at the Halfway House, it consuming my time and causing me to pass up other opportunities as I sink more and more into the company’s mindset and their way of doing things. It was only a few years before I got my 5 year pin and did the same thing everyone else did: get it, look at it with a mix of shock and wonder, let out a sigh and wonder where the years went. I didn’t want that life and I decided to leave.
My final show was a fitting end, a new ice show, the floor hadn’t been maintained and broke forcing the rental of a freezer unit, the zamboni’s near death forced odd solutions to scrapping, we had to ‘proceed with caution’, there were no cheddarwurst that xmas, the TD and I were having major problems and I nearly stopped caring. Still when
I watch the video I’m reminded of the good times and wish they’d last a little longer.
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