"Tell Me More..."

I am so tickled that my girls love watching 'Grease'! It's one of my favorite movies and it makes my husband laugh when I mimic Sandy at the end of the movie, when she says, "Tell me about it, stud." then drops her cigarette, stomps it out then uses her foot to push Danny over.

My girls like to dance to "Summer Nights" and while I was cooking dinner, they were dancing all over the kitchen while singing the lines to the song.

When I was in high school, I was really into drama of the theatrical kind. I danced in the Fall & Spring Dance Concerts, performed in the Spring Plays and participated in a traveling Road Show and performed all over the DC area and beyond.

Here, I am dressed in an African dance outfit and me and 2 other girls performed a traditional African tribal dance. We were taught by a wonderful woman and she was part of her own performing group and her husband played the music, thumping drum beats that you couldn't help but dance to. We also performed the dance at area colleges. My friend was dressed as a flapper and she had her own dance to do in the Fall Dance Concert.

For the Spring Play, we filmed a silent movie to play within the play. It was fun to dress as a maid and have real life movie people come and film us and we had to do multiple takes over and over. If I remember right, it took all day to make and the actual film was maybe 5 minutes long. I do remember it being cold and we hopped around to keep warm when we were waiting for our turn to act.

I also did a jazz dance in the same Fall Dance Concert as the African dance. We performed to the Elton John song, "Benny and the Jets". It was the first time I had ever heard of that song and I fell in love with it. I had to do several costume changes for this dance and at the end, I morphed into a crazed fan and ran through the audience trying to leap onto the stage.

I have fond memories of my days in the theater and I had the opportunity to meet lots of people, even famous ones. I miss it sometimes, when I hear a certain song that I performed to once. My traveling road show took me to South America and to many places along the east coast; it gave me a chance to get out of school for shows and to break curfew for late night rehearsals. It opened me up in more ways than one, and I really believe I would not be who I am today if it wasn't for my performances in the theater.

We performed "Summer Nights" in our road show. We did little skits, danced and signed songs and there was a bit of a 50s section in our show where we dressed in the poodle skirts and saddle shoes with pony tails and the guys were in white muscle tees with slicked back hair. We also did "My Boyfriend's Back" and "The Wanderer".

Ahh... good times. I think I surprised my girls when they discovered I knew the words to Summer Nights. They know I'm deaf and mama doesn't hear the music that comes on the radio-- but that's only partly true. If it's loud enough, I can hear the music, but unless it's something I know, I can't tell you who it is. My internal radio is permanently stuck in the 80s.