Nine….

I have to admit that nine has been my favorite year thus far (I probably said that about every year prior to nine so hopefully this trend will continue and I can sing his praises for many more to come).

If I asked him what the highlight of his year has been there is a very good chance that his answer would be “Blame it on the Wolf”. This was the play that all of the fourth grade classes put on in the spring.

All of the students interested in being in the play had to try out. This led me to my fallback position of hedging your bets and setting reasonable expectations. There are about 100 kids in the fourth grade (the MP is part of a phenomenon known as the “9/11 bubble” a large class of kids who were born in the year after 9/11. I hope the schools are planning for the next big wave which could be called “The Shades of Grey/Magic Mike bubble”. That should be hitting kindergartens around the country right about 2018). I estimated there would be 20 parts in the play at the very most. That is a lot of kids without parts.

The MP decided he wanted to try out for one of the three little pigs, some of the biggest parts in the play besides the wolf. He practiced for days trying out different funny voices and memorizing the lines for each pig. All the while I was saying things like “do your best but if don’t get the part it won’t be the end of the world.” “Just remember there are probably a lot of kids trying out for parts and they are going to need to spread out the parts across all the classes.”

Apparently I was so much of a Debbie Downer he asked if I thought he wasn’t good enough. Well, that wasn’t the case at all. “I think you are brilliant. They would be lucky to have you as one of the pigs. I just don’t want you to be too disappointed if it doesn’t go the way you want.”

It went the way he wanted. He was the main pig of the three and had quite a bit of dialog. Now when someone is critical of a group I am part of, I always assume they are talking about me. I take any criticism straight on the chin even when it is not intended. I apparently also project that onto the MP. He came home about a week and a half before the big performance and told me the teachers were concerned about the students knowing their lines. I told him we were gonna practice til he got it down because I could only assume, having no knowledge of what the rehearsals had been like or what his current memorization was, that they were talking about him.

They weren’t. The first read through we did he knew all of his lines. And could say them in his squeaky pig voice that he walked around the house perfecting.

The night of the performance I was more nervous than he was. I could not believe how well he did. He was funny in all the right parts and had a big grin on his face the whole time. You have never seen a happier pig. He loved it so much; he is going to do a summer theater camp with a showcase performance at the end of his session. I can only assume he will come away from that with an even bigger bite from the acting bug.