Where Drama took me…
I have three best girlfriends from high school. Two studied acting and one was just lucky.
WT performed in plays and went on to perform in theatre and film in New York.
AL had a natural instinct for drama. She managed to be cast in a Woody Allen film using an enlarged Xerox of her drivers license as a headshot.
KM never performed on stage, but she had a voice for selling things.
All three had their time in the profession.
I, on the other hand, am not inclined for on-camera or voice performing. I stick to writing what people say and do on camera. It’s where I am most at home.
The one time I took an acting class with an English actress who had worked with one of my favorite directors, Mike Leigh, I was reduced to a blinking wreck.
“Stop blinking!” she kept saying as I blinked.
(I am a blinker. )
When I’m with any one of these best friends, invariably drama occurs.
It can be little things.
Like when AL and WT were visiting me in Spain for the first time when we were on the verge of 40. We spent the day on the beach in Málaga before checking into our shared hotel room in Granada for a night out on the town.
As AL went through her bags-within-bags, I noted urgency in her rustling. I heard some mumbling that evolved into, “Where the…?”
And it started to feel panicky.
WT and I looked at each other.
Oh no, we thought. What’s coming next?
AL couldn’t locate her vintage Ray-Bans. She remembered having them at the beach. Now she couldn’t find them. We were going to have to back track, go back down to the garage, check the trunk of the rental car, maybe go back to the beach!
WT asked calmly, “Do you remember when you last saw them?”
And just as AL was about to blow, she found the Ray-Bans. The room went silent.
WT, being a prepared theatre actor, said,
“And… scene.”
We all laughed and went on to have a night of drama in the streets of the Albayzin.
Which brings me to drama as a sign of distress…
I’m told I was a well-behaved child.
I didn’t act out or cause much trouble (not until I had my first shot of tequila, and that was much later!)
My childhood friend, Juliano, did act out.
Everything seemed fine until something pissed him off.
I definitely provoked the first episode I experienced.
We were sitting across from each other during snack time in kindergarten. Juliano was trying to tell me something about something I clearly didn’t care about.
I put my fingers in my ears and made an obnoxious bla-bla-bla noise that I had seen on television. I remember watching his face become tense, and as if in slow-motion…
Juliano threw his milk carton in my face. And we were sitting close to each other.
He just whipped it at me.
Made his point. Don’t mess with Juliano.
Another time, we were eating ice cream at our friend’s house. One of the kids put a shampoo cap in Juliano’s ice cream. Juliano screamed and threw the ice cream bowl onto the floor.
The young babysitter was completely unprepared.
Writing this now, as an adult, I understand that we kids were being jerks. None of us had siblings. We were only children to artist parents without consistent supervision.
Anarchy was bound to occur.
Juliano was like a brother, and none of his outbursts caused us to separate or tell our parents. I simply learned that some kids had tempers, and if I wanted to hang out with them, I had to respect their boundaries or pay for it.
Juliano was the last friend I saw of my Washington DC friends before we moved to Michigan. It was 1978, and we seven-year-olds didn’t keep up with each other.
Our parents, however, did.
Years later, as a teenager, when I was visiting my dad in Maryland, he told Juliano’s parents I was there. A dinner date was suggested by Juliano’s father.
My dad dropped me off at a restaurant that two kids wouldn’t be eating at by themselves. It was kind of fancy, beyond our means or sophistication.
Juliano’s dad dropped him off a little bit late.
It was awkward, as I recall. He was tense.
I remember Juliano telling me about having had a drug problem but that he was doing better now. I’m sure that news wouldn’t have bothered me. It’s just that we didn’t have much else to talk about.
The check was left on the table by a waiter who probably thought we were going to do a runner.
Neither of us had any idea how this worked. Juliano’s dad had given him money to pay the bill. He insisted he was inviting me.
Juliano searched & searched his pockets but couldn’t find his wallet.
He was pissed.
I started to see the kindergarten Juliano emerge, his rage was so close to the surface. He believed his dad set him up to fail.
He went to use the payphone and said his dad was on the way with the wallet.
How we passed the time, I’m not sure.
Perhaps another round of Coke’s.
When his dad arrived, Juliano accused him of what he thought to be true. That his father had set him up to look stupid in front of me.
Juliano walked out.
His dad paid the check while trying to make casual conversation, but I saw through it. I believed Juliano: his dad had used a reunion with me to set him up to fail. To need his dad to save him.
I remembered hearing they had a volatile relationship.
I never spoke about the dinner date to anyone. I didn’t understand what happened at the time, and I didn’t want to start any rumors about the family.
Ten years later, I found out through mutual friends that Juliano died, aged 27.
I think of him to this day, about how his behavior that was characterized as dramatic was really a call for help.
I believe I’m more attuned to the nuances of drama because of him.
We were both Aquarius babies of the 70s.
YOUR TURN: I went through a slew of DRAMATIC memories over the weekend. From high school (when I first started drinking) and beyond.
I thought of some of my favorite dramatic friends, of times I’ve diffused drama because I’m used to dramatic personalities.
I decided to write about Juliano because I never have, and I felt like he deserves respect for knowing he was getting shafted by his own father.
Where does DRAMA take you?
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The writing instructor’s house nestled on a woodsy hill overlooking an expanse of lawn. Eight students gathered in her cozy family room, and she opened with an introduction game. “Say your first name and something you like to do,” our instructor said, “whatever pops into your head first—other than writing.” She started the game: “My name is Linda, and I like to play bridge.” She pointed to another person in the circle. “My name is Janie, and I like to knit,” she said, pointing to the next person. In my head, I rehearsed each person’s spoken information while observing their visual features. “My name is Barbara, and I like to golf.” Barbara pointed to me. “My name is Carole, and I like to weed.” Weed? As a kid, my weeding looked more like foot-dragging, lethargy, malingering. Now I weed almost every morning—and look forward to it, to observe something new about myself. In an article in the February 2017 issue of The Writer’s Chronicle, Jill McCorkle wrote, “I have often told my students that if you walk around with your eyes and ears open, you can’t possibly live long enough to write all of the potential stories you will glimpse along the way.” Weeding is walking around with my eyes and ears open, my nose and sense of touch, too. I observe where plants like to grow—both cultivated and volunteers—whether they are struggling or blooming, and when. Nearby rustling in the woods signals the presence of deer, a squirrel or some other creature. Drama? Fence lizards sun themselves on the rocks of the meadow path then dart onto a tree and disappear, camouflaged on the bark. “Aren’t you pretty,” I coo to the wood asters now in bloom. “No, you don’t,” I fuss at invasive stilt grass. “Keep growing, little Fothergilla, and you’ll be a good-sized bush someday.” I stroke the tender, dust-green leaves now turning yellow. Each morning offers new stories, new drama, depending on what I choose to observe. I'm selective because to observe everything would be like sitting in a large cafeteria, trying to see all the people, listen to their conversations, smell everything, taste, and touch. TMI. I weed out most detail in order to attend to what makes a story. Which characters, setting, plot, conflict, and resolution? I ask. Why do I like to weed? I love to observe nature’s spontaneity, improvisation, the dramatic blurting out. I love to nurture potential stories and cut others. To begin my day outside, observing God’s creation, pointing to each living thing, and saying, “Your turn.” “Our name is Zinnia,” the drama-red, pink, yellow, purple, and orange flowers say, “and we like to grow tall.”
I could talk about the time, way back, when I was warned not to chase my little brother around on slippery rocks, causing his fall, gashing his tiny knee, resulting in stitches. Or I could remember my big bro flattening me, a pre-teen, against the wall after I called him “FU*C*ER!”, resulting in a broken collarbone. Maybe tales of encounters with local police as a minor getting “booked” for multiple “arrests”, the underage drinker forcing sleeping parents awake to claim and retrieve an uncontrollable son. Or stories of gift-wrapped boxes flying in fits of rage, catapulted by our older brother on Christmas mornings, always a hard day for him. Suicide, divorce, death, drama. All families have drama, none are spared. But ever since early on, I decided to focus on fixing, the mending of bridges, the opposite of detonation. A kid trying to piece together unity whenever it frayed. I still do that today. The natural role of a middle child.