Is it Friday again? Now THAT is a good surprise...

Remember how I said last week that the acting bug bit me? I wasn't kidding.

It was Christmas time, 1989. I was almost eight. Really, so close I could taste it. But who had time to think about birthdays? I was in two Christmas plays that year: one, that 1980s kids' Christmas classic, The Great, Late Potentate, at my church; the other, a stage version of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, produced by a local children's theatre group. Of the two, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever was by far my favorite. I had a leading role and I got to be incredibly obnoxious and filthy dirty all the time as one of the Herdman kids. Who wouldn't love that? Oh, and I guess it was my one up close and personal brush with anyone truly famous (although she wasn't at the time). I'm not going to tell you her real name because I don't want 100,000 Wicked fans bombarding my blog, but her first name rhymes with Sweden and her last name rhymes with Schmespinosa. She played the snotty church girl in the play. She was older than us by a few years and very pretty, and we were all a little bit in awe of her. Now of course she is a Broadway superstar and she would not know me from a bedbug, but I can still say we did a play together, all those years ago. :)

But that is not what I was talking about, exactly. I know you are all shocked because I never get distracted mid-thought. Anyway...that Christmas, my sister and I spent most of our free time shuttling back and forth from one rehearsal or show to the other, doing a quick-change in the car from your typical Sunday School shepherd-type outfits to scruffy, dirty orphan outfits. (Now that I think about it, we appropriated "It's a Hard Knock Life" from Annie for that play, and I can still remember the choreography. I'm adding it to the All-Sharone Musical Revue I'm planning. Of which, more to come.) So it felt like just another Saturday afternoon to me when my mom picked us up early from the church rehearsal so we could be on time for our matinee performance of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. But instead of going to the hall, my mom pulled into the parking lot of the local movie theater.

"The matinee's been canceled," she informed us. She tried to twist her mouth into a frown, but an awkward grin burst through anyway. "We're going to have to go see The Little Mermaid instead."

Oh, you do not know what kind of somersaults my heart did at that moment. We didn't go to movies much. I can remember three or four movies, total, from my young childhood. But the behind-the-scenes specials for The Little Mermaid had been all over the Disney Channel for months, and I greedily drank them in at every opportunity. That fall, I had played the Sea Witch in a Hans Christian Andersen show at my school, and the director convinced my mom that we had to buy the pre-released soundtrack so I could thrash dramatically around the stage in my costume--a frothy concoction of turquoise tulle, blue-silver spangles, and one mean headdress--singing "Poor Unfortunate Souls." I'm certain I drove my family crazy with that cassette, which I played at every possible moment. But with all this, I never dreamed I would get to see the movie. In the theater. On a Saturday. When I was supposed to be somewhere else.

I sat, entranced, in the darkened theater. I tried not to blink. I didn't want to miss even one second. There was magic in the music, in the rich colors that burst off the screen, in the dreamy, wide-eyed princess and the hulking menace of the villain, in the happily ever after. When it ended, I heaved a contented sigh and walked out into the sunlight. I had never known such perfect happiness.

Well, not until I was introduced to Muenster cheese. But that's another story.

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This post is part of Flashback Friday, hosted by my favorite Maine-ite, Jo at Mylestones. I'd love for you to play along because it's pretty fun! You can link up here, if you'd like.

Also, since we're doing blog business down here, I know that I have basically been only posting for Flashback Friday lately. I'll address that later. For now, please just enjoy imagining my almost-eight-year-old self in a Sea Witch costume. It was fab.

Ok, that is all.