Annie

I was depressed. It was at Christmas In July. I was six years old.

I don’t know if other cities hold things like Christmas In July (I am evidently too lazy for a single Google search) but I’m assuming that they do. It’s probably somehow a neglected step-child of either The New Deal or The Great Society and so it’s observed across the nation to remind us all that in only five more months, we’ll be pretending to be excited about the junk we tear apart brightly colored, expensive paper to get to.

I, of course, did not think this way when I was six years old. I was a romantic. I wanted to see the best in everyone and most of the time I did. I also looked forward to Christmas, but on this balmy July evening I was not looking forward to anything, in fact, I was fairly positive that I had just peaked. It was all downhill from here. My whole world had just fallen apart.

I would feel this feeling again, although less acutely. I would come back the next year and play Robin Oakapple in Ruddigore (which is admittedly a pretty fucked up character for a seven year old to play, but what’re you gonna not just do Ruddigore?!) and I would actually have lines that time. Making the leap from playing Sandy in Annie to the lead in a Gilbert and Sullivan opera is the kind of thing that actors of any age dream of, and I made that fucking leap in a single year: first grade. I know. I’m pretty goddamn impressive. Or at least I was. I don’t know what I am now. (Existing?)

I loved playing Sandy. I got to wear a dog costume and hang out with a bunch of cool older (7-9 year old) girls. I got to be part of something that was bigger than I was and I got to put on a show. For two weeks that was all that I cared about. And then Friday afternoon came, we performed (what I would later find out was a thoroughly abridged production of Annie) and then went home. Camp was over. See you next year.

And oh what a blow it was because when you are six a year feels like an eternity. Sure, there would be the school year drama classes. But those would be straight plays, not musicals, and it wouldn’t be the same as focusing on something really hard for two weeks straight and trying your best. Annie had been something special. I asked my mom to buy both the libretto at Music And Arts Center and the Original Broadway Recording at Tower Records and had cried to the sound of Andrea McArdle belting out “Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow / You’re only a day away” completely obvious to the fact that the song had already been a punchline for over twenty years. I was honest. I had feelings. I was six years old.

Endings are a part of life. They seem to be one of the better ways that we have of measuring just how good the thing being ended was. If you feel badly when something ends, then it probably was a good thing. The opposite of the analogy of hitting your thumb repeatedly with a hammer. This is a hard thing to explain to a six year old, but I was a six year old who understood endings: I was afraid every evening when the sun would go down because that meant that sleep was coming and sleep felt a little bit too much like death.

And so I sat there with my family at an event meant to ready us for “the most wonderful time of year.” (I Googled: it’s a thing that seems like it happens all around the world so retract whatever thanks you gave the ghosts of Johnson and FDR) and then we went home and I wondered if I would ever be happy again.