My 5 minutes of holding it together

Image by geralt via Pixabay

Author’s note: This writeup answers a writing prompt by Narratively Academy’s Jesse Sposato, encouraging one to “Tell Us About a Time You Surprised Yourself.”

My last high-school hurrah was a regular old ha-ha. I got it not by stealing my younger brother’s material so much as by collecting his leftovers like a remora shadowing a shark.

Two grade levels apart, whenever we overlapped in school, my brother and I shook our heads and rolled our eyes when people presumed the same strengths and interests between us. Academically, we had the same general preferences for humanities over STEM due to clear-cut handles and struggles with those subjects. There were also enough common pop-culture tastes for us to bond over.

But as a learned cinephile and precocious thespian, he was, at a bare minimum, a boy of a hundred faces, voices, and impressions. Conversely, if I had a choice, I was a cut above Waldo in hiding amongst all crowds. I aimed to keep my head down, my grades up, and the spotlight on the people I covered.

As an eighth grader, my brother earned the equivalent of a baseball September call-up to portray the rabbi in a high-school production of Fiddler on the Roof. Fourteen months later, he capped his freshman year with the school’s prize for outstanding performance in dramatics.

Though not eligible for the same pedestal as, say, the elite jocks in our midst, he was popular among his fellow theater fanatics. But if any of them noticed me and our (honestly overblown) superficial resemblance, they were in for a letdown.

“That’s him,” I invariably clarified when asked if there was any chance of getting me on stage. I found my place in the community and my pleasure for hard work rewarded as a disembodied byline.

When I started garnering credible affirmation for my work at the campus newspaper, I ran with a passion I’d previously only felt and acted upon subconsciously. I set my sights on a career in print journalism and told anybody who needed to know that my job title was writer or bust.

“You don’t want to do that,” my 11th-grade history teacher insisted. He said TV and radio were the ideal avenue because they paid better.

Another teacher, who I never had for a class but would converse with during lunch hour or a free period, insisted I follow a path to play-by-play or sports talk-show hosting.

The problem was, unlike our enriching one-on-one chats with no audience, that career would entail being perceived far too much. It would involve real-time evaluation and no shortage of pressure to, in a way, perform.

Regardless, I got too much of a rush from writing to prioritize any other kind of job.

So maybe I could publicize or promote the theater program on paper. Maybe even join in to draft or edit an original script. But nothing more.

For my part, I scanned the graffitied autographs of past drama students and memorabilia on past productions and practiced retaining a straight face.

Being a nonathlete, I had logged enough experience embarrassing myself in areas I egregiously and helplessly sucked at through elementary- and middle-school gym class alone. I didn’t need to put myself through that kind of pain in any other fashion; or subject others to the toe-curling sights and sounds thereof.

No later than my halfway mark of high school, Stick to your strengths took root as my mantra. For me, the idea of benefiting from venturing out of one’s comfort zone didn’t lack merit but was still overrated.

That’s why, when I was a junior and he a freshman, I brushed off my brother’s request to consider joining the mass background ensemble for the winter musical, and that was that.

And yet, in the spring term of my senior year, I was all but pressed into service for the school’s production of The Female Odd Couple. Two of the theater program’s longstanding male staples would not be available, and someone needed to fill the role as one of the Constazuela brothers.

A smattering of staffers insisted I step up, and the play’s director even emailed me as if this resort was a fait accompli. If nepotism could bequeath an unearned privilege (or obligation) to a bloodline’s older party, this was proof.

I suppose I could have formed a suitable rendition of either Manolo or Jesus Constazuela by going back and studying Fawlty Towers. The late Andrew Sachs’s portrayal of the bumbling Barcelonian waiter Manuel lent the right blueprint for a comical supporting character.

Still, test-taking was my topmost academic bane in every subject, including my strengths in English, Latin, and history. What was a theater production — replete with to-the-letter memorization of dialogue and stage directions — if not a final exam graded in real time as the results unfolded before a literal audience?

I had to say no to this but felt duty-bound to accept.

Miraculously, even before I was to report for my first rehearsal as a mid-production recruit, I took one private test of my acting skills. The Odd Couple’s director phoned my house and said that one of the presumed sit-outs was coming on board after all.

Without saying so, the director implied that this boy’s proven experience made him the natural choice for the last unfilled role. He added how sorry he was to forego a chance to see “the Daniel Brothers” onstage together.

I pretended to reciprocate his disappointment, thanked him anyway, then made darn sure we’d each hung up before celebrating.

And yet, this was not the end of people pushing and pulling me toward that platform.

For me, the idea of benefiting from venturing out of one’s comfort zone didn’t lack merit but was still overrated.

The evening after my very last final exam and three days before my class’s commencement, the school was to host a year-end cabaret. As students claimed slots for performances of their choice, my dad rebooted his yearslong yearning to see his boys perform Monty Python’s “Parrot Sketch.”

I instinctively balked due to all of the aforementioned reasons. But upon further arm-twisting, I agreed that this act would be more doable. It would be south of five minutes and the two of us practically knew the script by heart already.

Without discussing the matter, we also knew who would play who. Rather than steal the show — as a few of our peers told me he did in the winter musical as a freshman — my brother would be given the bigger, funnier role as John Cleese’s eloquent complainant. I would be his living, breathing sounding board as Michael Palin’s difficult, rotting-baloney-stuffed shopkeeper.

This still meant I would have a share of lines to remember. But for the most part, my goal was to keep from breaking in the face of my brother’s well-honed Cleese-as-Mister-Praline homage. His take on the character’s accent and syllabic stress pattern would all but impeccably follow an original source whose effect on the humerus hadn’t waned in its nearly four decades of existence.

So on the evening of the cabaret, I ventured through the door to our right from the seats in our school auditorium. After the presiding faculty member conducted a short preshow meeting with all of the acts, everyone except me and my brother took the front rows of the audience while we stayed backstage and eased into performance mode. For my part, I scanned the graffitied autographs of past drama students and memorabilia from past productions and practiced retaining a straight face.

If we’re keeping any kind of points for-points against score, I played for the tie. But unless people saw something I didn’t feel, I might have actually won my give-and-take amusement game.

When my brother’s Cleese-as-Praline sarcastically tried to wake up the purportedly napping parrot, I took my cue to shove the cage and insist, “There! It moved!”

Rumbles of mirth emanated from the front row.

When my shopkeeper conceded he must replace the parrot, then apologized for having the species out of stock, I delivered his silly alternative offer.

“I’ve got a slug!”

Out-and-out laughter of a medium magnitude traveled from the seats to my ears. And I waited until we, in faithful Python fashion, broke the fourth wall to announce the sketch’s abrupt stoppage and adjourned to the dressing room before bragging.