One More Holiday Story

Okay, I volunteered sometime back in October to do stage makeup for the church Christmas Program as I have done for several years now. I didn't hear anything from anyone involved. Didn't hear. Time passed. More time passed. I got no rehearsal schedule. Nothing. I thought, well, okay, they must have someone else to do makeup. I should point out that the drama coordinator passed away last summer (Please see my post from July 19, 2007), so the people running this play are rookies. Plus, our Minister of Music left late summer, so that position is being filled by a volunteer. Anyway, the production was scheduled for December 8th & 9th. I was contacted the folks running the play on December 2nd. My old friend Charles, one of the directors, says, "Well, we need you to coordinate makeup; but we're really going to need you to run sound." What?!? That's not fun. That's work. I had to do a total shift of my mindset. I was nervous. If you mess up with makeup, you wipe it off and start over. If you mess up with sound, everybody knows. My coping mechanism was to take a scarf I was knitting (a Christmas present) and at forty minutes before showtime, I knit for ten minutes. Then we had a cast/crew huddle. Visit the bathroom, and then do the show. Anyway, the guys in the sound booth with me thought it was a little weird that I insisted on taking the ten minutes to knit at the rehearsals and the performances. I told them I had to do it "to get my head in the game". By the last performance, they were asking to see how long the scarf was. It turned out to be a lovely gift and the show went really well.