Underoos, my special friend

Now that THE BIG MOVE is done and we are mostly settled I get to finally participate in Rachelle’s “My Life Monday.” This week’s topic: a favorite childhood toy…

When I was young I used to love playing with my imaginary friends. I know this is true for almost any child at some point, but it was a bit extreme for me and it lasted beyond what I think most would consider “normal.” In addition to having my imaginary friends, I also pretended to be characters other than myself. Again, so do many children, but I guess for me it became persistent enough that I tried to convince people whom I’d just met that I was the other character; my parents promptly took me to a psychologist when I convinced my babysitter that my name was Dorothy.

I pretended to be several of my favorite heroines from books, movies, and cartoons. Dorothy was a big one – she had a dog, which I liked. Often I was seen running around our yard with my palm to my forehead as I communicated with the woodland creatures; I was Sheena, Queen of the Jungle after all. I actually saw part of that movie on TV recently and realized that it is practically porn, by the way. I can’t believe I was allowed to watch it. My parents must have been unaware. Anyway, I also pretended to be Kira, the female Gelfling from the Dark Crystal quite often. This was the best way to have a working romantic relationship with Peter Pan,which was clearly acceptable because they both had pointy ears, without having the difficult size discrepancies that he must have had with Tinkerbell – she was just doomed to long for him forever. Tinkerbell and I did have something in common though in that we hated Wendy for trying to take beloved Peter from us. But I digress.

I loved loved loved to pretend I was Wonderwoman. She was so amazingly awesome. For me, Wonderwoman was my first introduction to superpowers and the fact that she was a woman was just so cool to me. And she was an awesome superhero: powerful, confident, quick, and GORGEOUS. I loved her and therefore wanted to be her, and so, one of my favorite things in the entire world was my Wonderwoman Underoos. For most of my young childhood I could be found in my back yard wearing the equivalent of a swimsuit, swinging around a yellow piece of yarn (my AWESOME lasso.) It was very frustrating to me to not actually be able to lasso anything with my…string unless I set up the scenario very strategically. Actually, I guess I can’t remember that it ever worked, but I was not discouraged, I was Wonderwoman.

I’d like to say this was a fun phase that soon passed with nothing more than the minor concern of my parents, but this whole pretending-to-be-someone-else thing lasted a while. And yeah, I know I look too old to be wearing my Underoos to my tennis lesson there, and it probably was very inappropriate, but that’s not what I mean.

I rediscovered my love of acting when I was cast as Queen Aggravain in “Once Upon a Mattress” in 10th grade. I’ve loved it ever since. In college I majored in Theater and Education, spending more time in rehearsals than I did studying. And in Chicago I even made it my career for a little while until I learned that adding the business element really took out the fun. And that’s what acting has always been for me: pure fun. As a child I acted like other people because it allowed me to live in another world. I could be whoever I wanted to be, wherever I wanted to be. As an adult I loved it for the same reasons. I could be stronger than I was, funnier, smarter, prettier (at least it felt that way). I could even do things that in my own life I would not allow myself to do and not be accountable for these actions, which sometimes seemed more real than pretend. And the imaginary friends I created for myself as a child became the people watching me and the people acting with me. Peter thought I was funny, and so did the person on stage or in the studio with me, and that was a feeling I had not been able to experience as a child – being able to be these characters and interact with real people in front of real people, that was new. The best friends I have ever had are those whom I have acted with: my high school friends were fellow "Theater Nerds," my best friend in College was my servant in "Taming of the Shrew," most of my friends in Chicago and I started a theater company for a short while, and Hubby was my brother in "Arcadia." (eeek!)

When you really love acting, there is no other feeling in the world than really connecting with the character you are playing and being in the moment with the other person on the stage. Everything else falls away and you are just there with them, for real, perhaps aware of the energy of the audience as well, which only feeds into the hilarity/tension/fear/love/whatever it is at the time. It feels wonderful, powerful, just like Wonderwoman.