Just a little story

Greetings all.  Have you been enjoying the great weather out there?  I know I have!  I’ve actually gotten off the couch I’ve been affixed to and have a lot more energy than before.  I worked on the house a bit, still putting away from the move – WILL IT EVER END!  I’ve moved SO much in the last decade plus that my memory recall of actually unpacking to stay a while is foggy.   Cabinets, have them, but utilizing them for maximum convenience…troubling.  The house we are in is very old and oddly arranged in itself, so that just adds to inventive uses of strange spaces.  But, it is moving along….now that I am.

I’ve been thinking about kids lately, for obvious reasons.  And I thought I’d share a story about working with them.  Before the age of 22 or 23, I hadn’t even so much held a baby, let alone spent any significant time with kids of any age.  I was still pretty juvenile myself.  I was moving around a lot then and worked interesting yet far fetched jobs.  At this particular time I found myself in Colorado, staying with my sister near the Beaver Creek/Veil area.  I landed a job with Beaver Creek Productions.  Sounds fancy right?  Oh, believe me, fancy doesn’t even touch what it was.  My job was to be a character in the Buckaroo Bonanza Bunch.

The Buckaroo Bonanza Bunch consisted of a handful of people that dressed up in old timey country western garb that skied down Beaver Creek and Veil mountains and entertained ski schools mainly to give the instructors a bit of a break.  There was Jackrabbit Joe, Buckaroo Bob, Sure Shot Shirely, and myself – Penelope Quackenbush “the school marm with a sense of adventure” with a smidgen of a pyro issue that burnt the school down…  Essentially the job was kids theatre. However there was no script.  The other members had been doing it for so long they just told me to observe and interact as I felt comfortable, ease into things.

It was a three part job.  One day I might be up on the mountain stationed in the lodge wearing a prairie dress and straw hat.  The job was to walk around to families that were eating and use a southern drawl, engage them in witty banter.  I hated that because I felt stupid and it was impossible for me to stay in character.  Mostly I played wall flower.  If someone asked me how I was doing, my reply was always the same, “Finer than a frogs hair split three ways.” Sad really.

The second part of the job was dawning my Penelope ski dress, a thick woolen green full length dress equip with a bonnet.  I wore my Oakley sunglasses, my bright scream’n red salomon ski boots and a pair of hand me down straight skies with the masking tape price still marked “free” that my sister loaned me.  I loved this part of the job.  I’m a crappy skier, but lord I had fun.  I tried to interact with my co-workers skits on the mountain, but really looked forward to being a hazard on the mountain for all to see.

The third part of the job was acting in a dinner theatre for children.  Parents could drop off their little love bugs for three whole hours.  The kids would get fed, play games and at the very end of their evening they’d get a special show from, you guessed it, the Buckaroo Bonanza Bunch!  My first show was the most nerve racking of any show I’d ever been in.  I had no script and the Bunch just told me to “React”. There was no escaping the kids, I was on stage and I couldn’t wall flower or ski away.  So, I did what I was told, I reacted.  I laughed or was frightened or what ever range of emotion best suited when I noticed a boy, maybe the age of eight or nine, was watching me.  So I reacted to him, trying to get a smile.  Finally I got a reaction and when his lips parted he mouthed to me, “Fuck Off”.

Shocked, hurt and completely stymied as to what to do – I did what came naturally.  I waited till after the show and tattled on him to Buckaroo Bob who in turn told the boy to apologize to me.  I truly thought perhaps working with kids was not my forte.   It wasn’t until I was around 25 or so, living in an entirely different place and working an entirely different job that working with kids changed my entire career path.  But, that indeed is for another time.  I must get off the couch.  It is another beautiful day and I have a house to conquer.