Oops

After lunch, decked out in matching double-knit burgundy knickers and vest, I walked back to school. My hair was powdered to the color of an old man's. My white knee socks and black school shoes were close enough.

I was on my way to my debut performance in the play "Benjamin Franklin," and I had nabbed the title role!

I had worked and worked to memorize my lines. In fourth grade. the words were still in big print and the student teacher who was producer had been taking us through every motion at every rehearsal. The play was going to be put on for the other Key School fourth-grade students and our parents.

Joanna and Alan were the king and queen. Alan got on my nerves because he had memorized every single line in the entire play and when I stumbled he whispered cues to me. And as I said, I worked and worked to memorize those lines. Sort of.

Performance day was at hand. I had gone home for lunch and dressed in my costume. The knickers and vest outfit was something I actually had anyway, my mother had sewed this ensemble for me because for some crazy reason, knickers were actually in style, what a wonderful coincidence! I sprinkled talcum powder in my hair, grabbed my script, and was on my way.

It started off great. I had my lines down and said them without a hitch. The producer, a handsome bearded young man who had worked so hard with us, crouched below the stage and whispered lines to my poor castmates who forgot them. My peers sat cross-legged on the glossy multi-purpose room floor; parents lined the perimeter of the room in metal fold-out chairs.

I could see the wall coming at me. I knew I was going to hit it and that there was no stopping that wall. I knew that even Alan with his brain full of everyone's parts couldn't stop that wall from slamming into me. And so it did.

I hit the wall.

About three-quarters through the play, I stopped speaking. My chubby old man character vanished before me and I was left a plain old girl in burgundy knickers and Johnson & Johnson hair. Alan whispered furiously at me, my lines that he had stuffed his brain full of, the stupid show-off, but it was useless. I was tapped out, had already used everything I had.

You see, I had never even bothered to memorize all of my lines. I memorized a lot of them, yes, but I had been working so hard on the first part I had never really made it through the whole thing. And for some crazy reason, our teacher had never found that out. Evidently we had gone through the whole thing with scripts in hand, but he'd never bothered to have a full rehearsal without scripts. And I wasn't about to divulge my dirty secret. What kind of success story could I make if I admitted that I didn't even know half my lines?

So, the obvious solution was to get up in front of my adoring audience, do as much as I could, and worry about the rest later. And when later came, I stood on stage, stock still, waiting. Alan continued to whisper, the teacher hissed my lines from below me, but I stood as still as stone until I was ushered off the set and into the wings.

I don't remember the repercussions of that day. They had to finish the play without me, the main character. I guess the fourth-graders had to do improv or something because they had to skip the rest of my lines, or maybe Alan, the big loser genius said them in my absence like a ventriloquist without a dummy.

At least the stress was finally gone. I had worried and worried about the moment when my secret would be revealed, and it had finally come to pass. What a relief! I went home that day, doffed the knickers, shook the powder out of my hair and withstood the disappointment of my mother. Then I probably went out to play.

I bet the student teacher got in more trouble than I did.