The Unaware Audience

A couple of weeks ago, I contributed a guest-post to a series about doing crazy shit hosted by Brian over at The Cheek of God. The story I told there reminded me of yet another time where I pretended to be something that I was not for no real reason other than to do it. I almost hesitated to post it for fear nobody will ever trust me again, but, you know, screw it. So without further ado...

It was Friday night. I had made it this far, five and a half days since the previous Sunday afternoon when I’d first started the challenge. The idea had been conceived the week before and quickly codified into a wager. It had been Champ’s idea, most likely borne out of his annoyance with me.

“I bet you can’t talk with that stupid accent for a whole week.” he’d said.

“Aw yeh?” I said. Or maybe I said “Oh rayally?” Or worse, “Betcha ah can, mate.” I don’t remember my exact words, only that I made it clear that this kid was game.

The accent in question was a rather poor Australian that myself and a few of the other kids on the camp staff had taken to using for no apparent reason. No wait, there was a reason: we figured out that it annoyed Champ.

Champ. That was his name. From his short stature to his dark hair to his jacked-up pickup to his resentment of having his authority disrespected or disparaged in any way whatsoever, he was every bit the Napoleonic figure. Still, I didn’t totally hate him. And looking back, I confess I feel just a twinge of sympathy that he had to be in charge of a bunch of asshole teenagers.

But hey, nobody was forcing him.

Somehow, I ended up as one of the main figures in this game of accent annoyance, so it was to me that Champ delivered his wager. “I bet you can’t.” he’d said. Bitch, you just lost a bet.

It ended up being me and one other kid in on the bet, another guy my age whose real name totally escapes me now, but who we all called Fievel because he wore a hat just like the movie mouse of the same name.  They had the same hat and everything. The point of the bet was for the two of us to speak in those ridiculous Australian accents, 24 hours a day, for an entire week. Since there was a new batch of kids in camp every week, the bet started when the first group rolled in, and ended when the last troop rolled out. For the kids in attendance that week, their entire experience of Fievel and I would be as guys speaking with funny accents. So we decided that rather than just speaking like Australians, we would just go on and be Australians. I mean really, Australia vs. Texas - how different are they? We looked at a map and figured out what town we were from, dreamed up a bit of backstory as to why we were in the States. Conveniently enough, Fievel even had an Australian scout uniform. Our story was air-tight. We were good to go.

Did I mention this was a boy scout camp? Yeah. A scout is trustworthy.

We made it through the entire week with nary a slipup. Looking back, I can’t say for certain that we had all of the adults fooled, but most of the boys seemed to buy it. If any didn’t, they kept their mouths shut. The rest of the staff seemed to have our back when it came to verifying out story. Fievel and I briefed each other throughout the week re-garding any pieces of our fictional past that we had told anyone, just so that our lies would all add up into one great glorious mound of truth.

FIEVEL: So ah tauld thees keeds thees morning that our mum had a pet koala beh when we lived in Australia.

HOLMES: Oh yeh?

FIEVEL: Yeh. Sed we hed to laeve it at the koala beh pound when we moved to Texees.

HOLMES: Ah'll mike a note of eet. Oh, before ah forget, ah told some keeds that you lost a surfing competition to an Aboriginine keed named Terrence.

FIEVEL: Crikey! Whoy'd ah heff to lose?

HOLMES: Because you're a terrible surfer, stewpeed.

At one point, I got chewed out by one of my supervisors for something that wasn’t my fault, and had to chew back with the accent in place. I can now say from experience that expressing your righteous indignation in a voice that is not quite your own has a way of pulling you out of yourself. I’m not sure that Travis from Houston would have responded to a misplaced ass-chewing with quite so much volume, but Travis from Perth, Australia had no problem yelling back at his superiors, and didn’t really care if he was making a scene. Because the whole week was already a series of scenes, why not have one where the Australian guy gets pissed off? I hear those people have anger issues. They're descended from criminals, you know.

Friday night of every week was the closing campfire, our little way of saying thanks and so long to the people that had spent the week with us. The Sunday night opening campfires had a way of being subdued, what with all these boys being away from the comforts of home, some of them for the first time. But after a week in the woods, closing campfires could be counted on to be rowdy affairs. But that particular week, I felt a bit of melancholy. I had essentially spent the week lying to these kids and their adult leaders for no real reason. Yes, this story wouldn’t be complete if it didn’t have that word in it: lying. It had been fun, but now that I was about to send these kids back into civilization with false information in their heads, my conscience was making a pest of itself.

But then the campfire ended and whatever guilt I felt subsided along with its flames. The troops rolled out the next morning. Fievel and I won our bet, so Champ held up his end of the bargain by taking us out for pizza. We ordered two larges topped with pepperoni and extra Champ-is-a-loser sauce.

I went back to work at camp again the next summer. One week, some kid whose face I didn’t recognize walked up to me and asked, “What happened to your accent?” It was a shitty feeling. I made up something about how it had faded over time, been in Texas for so long, blah blah blah. I responded to a question about one lie with another lie. One fiction propping up another.

So with that, my career as Andy Kaufman came to an end.

Standard play time is 8:00, so I was caught unawares

While it is true that I am guilty of making the occasional idiotic wisecrack about their humble origins in the backwoods of Appalachia*, the fact of the matter is that I actually quite like midwives and doulas. The ones I've met anyway, they all seem like good people, undoubtedly a breed unto their own. Not to mention the fact they've got the skills to bring the biscuits, and that's some skill worthy of respect.

But who knew they could be so dramatic?

See, in preparation for the birth of our little Mo'mo, The Ash and I are taking a class in natural childbirth taught by a midwife and doula pair. In spite of their slightly disorganized manner, in spite of the fact that our books didn't arrive in time for the first or even second class, in spite of the fact that class is every Tuesday night for six weeks and I typically have a crappy attitude about going since it's Tuesday and Tuesday is just Monday's frumpy cousin with no personality, in spite of all that, I already feel better prepared for this birth than I did for the last one. Sure, we took a class to prepare for Henry's birth, but all I really remember of it is how careful the teacher was to match up each couple with a baby mannequin of the appropriate color. Because there's no way I could ever care for a non-white baby mannequin.

So far in this class, there have been no such awkward acts of color coordination, but that is not to say that nothing of note has taken place. In fact, at our very first Tuesday night session, the doula lady kicked things off by freaking my shit out. Without warning, without preface, without the slightest inkling of what she was about to do, she suddenly started acting out the part of a woman in labor having a very serious contraction. My first thought was, "Oh look, she's pretending to have a contraction. Gosh, she could have warned us." But then the act continued, the moaning, the rocking back and forth, and all the while the midwife stayed by her and soothed her. The student body, we all kept our seats and said nothing. And then the thought occurred to me, what if this isn't an act? What if she's having some kind of seizure right here in front of us and nobody is doing anything because we all assume she's acting out a contraction, but in fact somebody needs to be calling an ambulance right fucking now? You know, like when actors actually get stabbed on stage because some knave switched out the dummy knife with a real one, but the audience doesn't react because they think he's just acting, which is truly ridiculous since that bastard couldn't act his way out of a paper sack and the only way he could ever deliver a convincing death scene is if he was really dying so it serves him right anyway? Not that I would ever do such a thing, mind you. I began to wonder if I should speak up, if I should run for the phone, if perhaps my long dormant first aid skills would be required to save the day.

Thankfully, just as I was about to spring into action, she brought her little act to a close, which was a relief since we paid good money for that class and we didn't need our teacher to go all spazoid on us.

Not that I mind a bit of dramatics thrown into the midst of everyday life. I have a rather expensive piece of paper from U of T that implies as such. Still, a bit of warning next time ladies.

* Yes, I know midwifery did not originate in Appalachia, but for some reason the two are hopelessly intertwined in my brain, so that's just how it has to be.

Life as Performance as Life

I had to give a presentation the other day at work. I'm not really comfortable standing in front of people and presenting information to them and then fielding their questions about it, so I'd been stressing hardcore for like two weeks. It's odd because I'm fairly comfortable getting up on stage and acting out a part in a play in front of an audience full of strangers, but not so in a situation where I have no character to veil myself in. I'm not sure what it implies about me that I'm more at ease in front of a crowd when I can be somebody else rather than myself. I've considered the approach of doing presentations in some kind of character, like pretending that I'm Johnny Corporate Guy, but I'd have to go so Andy Kaufman over the top with something like that, I'm not sure that I'd be able to hold it together. Don't get me wrong, I can bullshit with the best of 'em, but I don't think it'd be wise to incorporate performance art into my office job. So it was just me.

But it came off well. And I'm glad it's over.

And get those Carnival of the Mundane entries in! Yes you! Yes now!