Previously:
In which I interview myself (part 1 of 2)
In which I interview myself (part 2 of 2)
Dopple: Here we are again.
Me: I wish I could quit you.
Dopple: Wouldn’t that be impossible, since we’re the same person? Or is it a metaphor?
Me: It just seemed like a good place for a funny quote.
Dopple: We were previously talking about your writing but I’d like to touch on your acting.
Me: My acting was touched, yes.
Dopple: You took drama in school.
Me: I yearned to be dramatic so it was a good fit. In elementary school it was just dumb skits and variety shows and it was all goofy fun. In junior high we started doing more demanding material, like Puss in Boots. Wait, that’s not a good example. We did stuff like The Boy Comes Home, a drama about a young solider returning after fighting in World War I. I played the boy. It wasn’t much of a stretch.
Dopple: Talk about the inevitable drama off-stage.
Me: The drama teacher in junior high liked me, so I typically got cast for most of the lead parts. I was the cat in Puss in Boots and Androcles in Androcles and the Lion. A friend of mine was not well-liked by the teacher because he was…a scamp, let’s say. Yes. Very scampy. Most of the drama students were female, so she was forced to cast him in each production because there were so few guys (and several couldn’t act, they apparently just wanted to hang around with the girls), usually as some kind of comic relief. This friend would commit subtle acts of sabotage and generally drive her crazy. To be fair, she was very open to being driven crazy by him. But in terms of off-stage drama, there really wasn’t a lot, mostly just the usual anxiety about how nothing seemed to be pulling together and opening night was only days away. Oh, and all the girls kept pulling on my tail when I was Puss in Boots. I hated that. But I still remember the line, “Unlike humans, cats only speak when they have something important to say.” Which is pretty much true.
Dopple: You continued on acting in high school?
Me: Yes. In high school it was no longer Drama, it was Acting. I don’t know why. My friend and I switched roles (ho ho) in high school because the acting teacher liked him and seemed indifferent to me. I got to be supporting characters while he got the leads. We did a pretty good run on Dark of the Moon in which I played Floyd Allen, the brother (supporting character) of Barbara Allen (one of the leads). My friend played the brimstone and fire Preacher Haggler. I don’t know if the casting was meant to be ironic or not. We had a great moment during one performance when four of us were on stage and one of the others missed a line, causing a large and vital part of the scene to be skipped over. We had to somehow get back to it. For a few terrifying moments we stood there in silence wondering what to do. I then blurted out an improvised line: “I bet you want to get Barbara married.” He grabbed onto it like a shark snacking on a harp seal. “That’s EXACTLY what I want to do!” And then we covered the missing material and it was all good. I sort of miss the excitement of that, a live performance where things can go wrong and you have to think on your feet.
Dopple: And you continued acting into college?
Me: Yes. I went to Malaspina College straight from high school but dropped out in the second year, filled with self-doubt and greasy hamburgers. While I was there I took part in Oh What a Lovely War, a World War I musical. It was a sprawling ensemble piece and I got to play seven parts, ranging from a Belgian general wearing an extremely tall and silly hat to a Scottish gillie to a soldier singing “Silent Night” in German during a lull in the fighting. I also made a duck from a rubber chicken to use during a hunting bit. Pamphlets were handed out onstage during a town square scene where Emily Pankhurst, a political activist, protests the war. The pamphlets were all handmade and had authentic anti-war slogans on them, except for one which read: “What did you do in The Great War, Daddy?” “I died from eating a McRib!” You never knew if you would get the McRib pamphlet. The intent was to cause the receiving actor to crack up and fall out of character. Theater is a bit strange that way. The McRib was pretty new at the time. I liked it, proving I had no taste when I was young.
Dopple: Since you’re now in tech support, you obviously decided not to pursue acting as a career.
Me: I last acted in the 1988 Vancouver Fringe Festival. I played a nut who died tragically at the end. It was a fun part but the review in the SFU paper was not kind. It unfavorably compared the play to Happy Days. I did one more play the next year but wrote and co-directed and didn’t act. Oh, I did some roleplay in a course this year where I was apparently very convincing as an indifferent tech support person. I’m not sure how I feel about that.
Dopple: With your dreams of acting left behind, what did you do next?
Me: Went to school, then got jobs. The End.
Dopple: The End?
Me: Well, there’s a few details here and there, but those are the broad strokes.
Dopple: Those strokes aren’t broad, they’re planet-spanning.
Me: I think big.
Dopple: What’s the worst job you ever had?
Me: Making pizzas at Mrs. Vanelli’s. I can’t say why, exactly, but I just really hated making pizzas. It was like making them destroyed the magic of eating them. Pizza was my favorite food.
Dopple: Mmm, pizza.
Me: Exactly. I also found working as a TSR at Shaw to be soul-draining.
Dopple: You were a Terminate and Stay Resident program?
Me: The only people who will get that joke are old and wearing adult diapers. As a Technical Support Representative, I logged into the phones at the start of my shift, took calls all day, then logged out and went home. It was strangely wearying to sit there and just take call after call. I felt like my mind was getting sucked out through the headset. I quit after six months, which is five months and 20 days longer than I lasted making pizzas. There was also a cull of 500 employees while I was there. As you might guess, it doesn’t do a lot for morale or your feelings of job security. The people were nice, though.
Dopple: Any funny stories?
Me: No.
Dopple: What’s the zaniest place you’ve worked at?
Me: I have not worked at any place I would call zany. My first job in Vancouver was working at Expo 86, but it was in a souvenir store and was actually pretty dull. It was comparable to making pizzas, though not as messy. It might have been zany if I was dressed as some kind of Expo mascot but I just wore pants.
Dopple: What career advice would you give today’s youth?
Me: Avoid retail at all costs. And call centers. And especially retail call centers, if they exist.
Dopple: You worked retail and didn’t like it?
Me: Let’s just say yes and multiply that by a thousand. I am not a salesperson. I’m not even much of a people person. This is not a good thing in retail. After my last retail job I vowed never again and I’ve stayed true to my word. I think I would prefer going feral and live off wild berries in the woods to working in retail again. However, I worked at Starbucks many years ago, which may technically be considered more of a service job, and it was not that bad, other than smelling like coffee all the time. I had some good times there. It was still generally terrible, but definitely less terrible.
Dopple: I have a lot more questions but I see it’s getting late again.
Me: Part 4 of 2, then?
Dopple: It’s a date. That reminds me, you totally kiss on the first date.
Me: I do, sometimes. Well, not now because I’m not dating anymore.
Dopple: Do you have colorful dating stories to share?
Me: Perhaps. But as you said, it’s getting late. We need to get some sleep so we can run in the morning.
Dopple: We’ll talk about running, too. And more on writing and a bunch of other stuff.
Me: This is pretty narcissistic, don’t you think?
Dopple: Absolutely. Is that an issue?
Me: Not at all. Just wondering.
Dopple: All right, then. Off we go.
Stay tuned (in as much as one can tune into a blog) for Part 4 of this apparently never-ending interview in which I quiz myself about dating, writing, running and ugly feet.
