Thursday, June 26, 2008

i forgot part 2 of dream 1

It's the part where I have been chosen to be a madrigal at my high school and the other madrigals are kids I went to school with, but they are high school age and I am my current age. I ask them if it bothers them to have somebody who is old enough to be their mother singing and dancing with them (because this group of madrigals not only sings, but dances) and they hem and haw and one of the girls, Marcie, says, well, it wouldn't be so bad if you'd quit using words that we use and just talk like a mom. So I stop using words like dude and we all get along fabulously. We prepare for our first performance by running through the songs two times, but we don't have time to go all the way through the dancing part of the performance. The girls all have two different dresses--a long, dark blue, fun-to-twirl-around-in dress and a cream-colored lace that almost looks like a dress someone would wear for a second marriage. Our first performance is in the biggest concert hall I've ever seen and there are lots of madrigals from other schools and famous people ready to judge the entrants. Before we even begin our song/dance, I realize that I'm wearing somebody else's dress--a girl who has missed the performance--so I try to change to my own dress while on stage, but Marcie will not allow it. We begin the song/dance and I quickly realize that I can't remember most of the words or any of the dance, so I try to follow the others and only mess up slightly one time at the end of the dance. After the dance we mingle with some of the other students from other high schools and we learn that we are right in the middle of the scores--not in the best groups but not in the worst groups. We gather in our choir room to talk madrigalese, where I learn that I missed the first get together/information meeting and I need to go to Hill Air Force Base to pick up my madrigal jacket. The madrigal teacher then hands each of us an envelope that contains a check made payable to each of us. I open my envelope and find a check for $6000. The other madrigals tell me that I can use the money for whatever I want, but there should be enough to cover the cost of my dresses and jacket and our two out-of-town performances, one in Los Angeles and one in New York. I ask where the money comes from and they tell me the madrigals have sponsors who like to donate money to the madrigals because it's a good tax write-off. As a former band geek, I know that we never had that kind of sponsorship and I think to myself, "I could buy an entire top-of-the-line tuba with this kind of money."

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