Today was the second day of my three-week long Musical Theatre intensive workshop thing. I signed up, thinking I'd have lots of kids my same age, but no, I'm the oldest one there. There's one other 20 year old, and the overwhelming majority of kids are in junior high. I decided that I could still use the experience, both in terms of performing and in dealing with large numbers of kids, but still, by the end of the day, I wanted to kill every child in the room with a shovel. Was I ever that obnoxiously whiny and egocentric? I know I was egocentric, but I always throught of myself as humorously endearing and not really serious.

The past two days, I've tried to be outgoing and thoughtful, trying to engage those on the fringes, too shy or awkward to strike up a conversation. Bad idea. I've learned that this is a recipe for INSTANT CLING. The first day, one girl turned out to have an infatuation with long hair, and kept trying to touch mine when I was focused on other things. She also turned out to have no concept of personal space, and kept trying to follow me around during a break. And she's 15! Shouldn't she have learned some degree of social acceptability by now?

Today, I tried to find an older group to hang out with. It didn't help. I can stil hear their whining, reverberating in my skull. It turns out that EVERY SINGLE GIRL IN THE ENTIRE PROGRAM WANTS TO DO STUFF FROM WICKED. And they act like they're each the biggiest Wicked fan in the entire universe, and that if they have to sing something from Hairspray until the additional material from Wicked has been assigned, that it is unacceptable and totally unfair and that they want to switch into whatever section is doing stuff from Wicked, regardless of the level.

Also, they seemed to have no concept of sharing time, and not being in the spotlight 24/7. We did this big improv exercise, where we split into three groups, then into two smaller teams, and each team came up with a list of occupations for the opposing team members, a setting and time period, and a situation. For ours, we were stranded in a tree in Africa during the Middle Ages, being menaced by a lion. I was a dentist. I told my team that I had an idea for establishing the time period, and to please let me speak first. When we got up to perform, I pointed into the audience at the imaginary lion and said, "Hark! Tis that selfsame beast which smote bold Pyramus and fair Thisbe. And behold its abscessed molar! Fetch the leeches, good sir!" The teachers cracked up, and a fair percentage of the students seemed to get the joke. And I know Shakespeare came several centuries outside the Middle Ages, but whatever. It was effective.

But as soon as I stopped speaking, suddenly everyone wanted to talk. The rest of our performance was completely muddled, because no one could take turns unless it we had a pre-established order. Utter chaos. After all the teams went (with similar results), the teachers came up and imparted the importance of sharing time and letting each team member have their moment, but they should have done that with the first group that went, not the last!

I could go on, but I don't want to have to relive everything. I'm sure I sound unbelievably petty and self-absorbed from this, but I assure you, Mother Teresa and Ghandi would have banded together and laid down unholy smackdown on these children after ten minutes, and each day we were there from 9-3:30. Anyway, suffice it to say, I left 15 minutes early, because I just couldn't take any more of it. I sat, baking in the 100 degree sun at the DART station, exhausted physically from all the dancing and mentally from the intense aggravation. And did I mention that I'm slightly anemic, and about to start my period? Not a good combination.

Then I made the mistake of sitting next to this jovial yet clearly unhinged man on the DART train back home, who--and I am not exaggerating here in the least--had worse teeth than Gollum. Poor man, I can't imagine how he could talk or eat without shredding his gums to ribbons. It was either the seat next to him or standing, and after I made eye contact I felt it would be the hight of rudeness if I decided to stand. As soon as I sat down, he smilingly said "I don't bite!", and THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR IMPLANTING THAT MENTAL IMAGE IN MY BRAIN. There would have been no problem if he hadn't said that! The entire ride back, as we carried on conversation, in the darkest, most irrational corners of my imagination, I kept picturing him suddenly flipping out and sinking his teeth into my jugular, like Gollum biting into the soft, white belly of an unsuspecting fish in the intro to "Return of the King." I felt rotten, because he seemed to be a really nice man, and I was picturing such horrible things. Bleh.

Anyway, after all of that, I had 30 minutes to unwind before shipping off to an hour of traffic and four hours of Animation class, which I was totally unprepared for, as my old laptop (with Maya on it) is being unbelievably skanky, and now won't even connect to the internet. And I still haven't gotten it to connect with the new laptop so that I could transfer the files. AAARG. Fortunately, my professor was very understanding, so stuff is more-or-less okay. *sigh*

And that was my day.