All the world's a stage

Nothing is what it seems when you're on stage. From the audience, it might look like you're sitting in a house, or a resteraunt, or a park somewhere, but it's just wood scraps and paint. The audience knows that, but thanks to suspension of disbelief, they don't care and accept anything presented at face value. You can be anything or anyone, regardless of who or what you really are. In some cases, the role you play influences your behavior in real life- like when I had to play Peter in Narnia last year. Towards the end of the process, I started craving video games and wanting to blow things up. It was a little creepy. When it was over, I had to be thinking all the time, "Oh, wait. I can stand like a girl now." Then I'd shift my weight onto one leg and tilt my head slightly to the side. When sitting, I had to remind myself to keep my knees together. I made myself wear makeup. I let myself sing an octave up in church again. It's amazing how differently guys and girls behave, and nobody even notices, but they do notice when people step outside what's expected of their gender. Anyway, it's really strange to have an actual boy as Peter this year. I find myself giving him tips- David, if you just kept your shoulders down and back more, you'd look a lot more like the future High King of Narnia.- and then feeling like I should hit myself over the head with a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary. He obviously is more qualified for the role than I was. I don't know. It's just weird.

Ponder this. The girls who are the strongest, the most aggressive, and in short the least 'girly' are generally those who don't have the willowy, stick thin body they need to make it as a dancer. Generally, they're more 'well endowed' than most, real bottom of the pyramid types. Since nobody wants to hold them up, they get stronger holding everyone else, metaphorically speaking. The willowy types know they're willowy and act like it. Super girly. They actually fit in a tutu, so they get cast to wear them. Therefore, we will never have a flat-chested girl cast as a boy in Narnia. It's as paradoxical as it is problematic. Just a thought I've been thinking for a while.

Apparantly, Homecoming is tomorrow, which explains why everyone's been dressing up weirdly all week. (I swear, if I ever see another boy in a grass skirt and coconuts, some heads are going to roll.) Today seems to have been something like North Spirit day. If they had called it "Pretend you like North day", maybe I would have given it a second thought. Or even a first thought. Everyone else is going to a lame-o assembly where they'll probably have some stupid relay race and probably pour gravy on people (They did that once). I'm skipping it to do my math homework. I haven't actually started yet. The librarian let me stay in the library, which they don't usually do, probably because it looks like I'm studying furiously, staring at the screen and typing a good 100 wpms. I wonder how fast I actually type. I'll have to pull out ol' type to learn and find out. I should start actually being productive now.

Update: It turns out that this particular assembly did not involve gravy in any way, but did feature milkshakes and a bunch of girls who didn't know how to walk in heels on the Homecoming Court. If you didn't know that walking in heels is a totally separate skill from walking like a human being, you have obviously never tried it, which hopefully includes any and all of my male readers.