Fringe Festival Folly

Sometimes I worry that I will inexplicably find myself performing at the fringe festival.  There I am up on stage, lights glaring in my eyes, sweat streaming down my face, hundreds of people out there watching.  I’m quite out of breath.  I surmise I’ve been dancing, which would explain the laughter welling up out of the darkness beyond the foot lights.  And perhaps the rotten tomatoes strewn about, unless I was juggling rotten tomatoes.  

Panting, wiping the perspiration from my eyes, I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to do next. I also don’t know why I’m wearing tights and an embroidered teddy bear motif sweater, but I decide I have more urgent needs to attend to, for there is a man in a top hat just off stage urging me on.  To do what, I’m not sure.  I signal to him as much, but he just keeps whispering “go on!” and shooing me with his hands.

And then the music starts.  The stage fills with other similarly clad performers.  We form a kick line of sorts and begin dancing.  With all those motif sweaters, we look like a PTA meeting gone terribly wrong.  I struggle to keep up so as not to embarrass myself.  But I don’t know the steps, and even if I did, that probably wouldn’t help.  You see, I can’t dance.  At all.  Some people are terrified of public speaking, others of being eaten by a shark.  Me, I’m terrified of dancing, and especially dancing where other people can see me.  You know that song with the annoying refrain that talks about the ocean and being little and ends with something like “I hope you DA A A NCE! I hope you dance!”  That song to me is an evil, hateful song, like a curse spit on me by an old green faced witch.  But I digress.  A little.

I, of course, cannot keep up.  They are kicking and twirling and leaping and flipping over each other’s backs and sliding between each other’s legs, and there I am, rocking from one foot to the other, snapping my fingers, occasionally rocking my head to one side.  And I ponder, how did this happen?  How did I end up here?  It’s not a dream and I cannot wake up.  This is really happening!

Apparently, though, I’m the star of the show, because soon the music ends with a crescendo of jumps and twirls and tumbles and then all the other dancers are down on one knee all around me, arms outstretched towards me as if to say “voila!”  And I hear wild applause!  I walk off stage then, thinking, damn!  I’m the PTA president!