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Sea Glass By IG: @seaglass_takechan

Jesus screamed “JESUS CHRIST YOU STABBED ME”.

Since that Jesus had to be taken down due to a bad case of stab-itis, the backup Jesus came in, but he weighed significantly less than the original Jesus- which would have been fine, except that at the end the cross was supposed to ascend upwards with Jesus on it, and the weights hadn’t been adjusted.

my first year doing this, our industry contacts were 1 actor, 1 casting director, and 1 producer to get different aspects of the business, and they all gave us amazing advice and told fantastic stories. the actor in question was Zazu on Broadway’s The Lion King for several years, and told the best story by far.

in The Lion King, there are only two pieces of pre-recorded noise in the whole show. one, when Pumbaa does a MASSIVE fart while fighting the hyenas, and the other being Mufasa saying REMEMBERRRRRR as Simba climbs Pride Rock. the actor told us while struggling not to laugh that, during one night’s performance, someone forgot to flip the tape of these pre-recorded noises.

so, at the end of the show, the great climax where Simba finally accepts his place in the Circle of Life, the heavens parted and-

PFFFFFFFFFRRRRRBTFTBTBFTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

everyone froze. and then all ran off stage positively HOWLING with laughter.

Originally, the actors were going to stroll on stage with our Lefou hauling in the really neat (and real!) taxidermied deer head that we had found in a local thrift store. Now, two days before opening night, our director wants Lefou to run in from off stage and catch a stuffed duck that Gaston has just shot. This, of course, requires two things to work properly as a scene: a gunshot noise, and a stuffed duck.

The gunshot noise, we had covered. Blue-collar, redneck school? Guns a plenty to record. The stuffed duck? Harder than you might have thought to obtain.

Three hunting stores, two taxidermists, and one Pet Supply Store ™, I’d finally found a semi-realistic pheasant squeaky toy. What follows is an account of the ways this dog toy managed to be the nightmare prop of the six show run.

Opening Night: The stagehand, who was supposed to drop the bird from the ceiling catwalk, missed his cue and didn’t drop the it. Lefou’s actor rolls with it and does an excellent job of looking around foolishly before getting cuffed upside the head by Gaston. The stagehand then drops the bird squarely on Gaston’s head. Cue laughter.

Saturday Matinee: Different stagehand throws the bird instead of dropping it and beans Lefou directly in the face with the prop. Lefou falls over. Cue laughter.

Saturday Night: Bird is missing during curtain call. Director hauls the deer head down from it’s place on the tavern wall and tells Gaston and Lefou to revert to the old blocking i.e. no gunshot, no bird, just walk in with trophy. During Gaston and Lefou’s conversation, gun shot sound goes off and a stagehand throws the bird onto the stage…from the wrong side of the stage. Lefou and Gaston stare at it in awkward silence for a solid thirty seconds before Lefou makes off-script, subtle joke about Gaston’s gun going off late instead of early. Cue adults in the audience laughing.

Sunday Matinee: Director begs the stagehands to get the cue right at least once. Gunshot and bird prop go off without a hitch. Lefou accidentally catches the prop when it falls from the catwalk. He’s so startled that he caught it that Gaston runs right in to him. They drop both the gun and the bird props, and grab the wrong prop in their scramble. Gaston spends the rest of the scene gesturing dramatically with a stuffed pheasant, instead of a gun.

Sunday Night:  Director is fed up with bird prop, decides that Lefou should just carry bird prop in after gunshot happens off stage. Lefou accidentally squeezes the prop during the intro conversation, startling both actors into silence with the squeaky toy noise - apparently, neither of them realized it was a dog toy.

It was awesome because when people saw the play and didn’t know the girls were identical twins, it literally looked like it was one actor doing multiple, uber fast costume changes.

One of our first performances was for our peers and it was a big school so lots of people didn’t know the twins. This - for some reason - was also the performance they chose to record.

Listening to the confusion of the audience during the playback was fantastic and completely topped by the moment Viola walked off stage left just as Sebastian walked on stage right and someone right beside the camera goes “OH WHAT THE FUCK” so loudly it drowned out everything else.

It’s like our third show and everything has been going surprisingly well. Hook and Smee climb to the top of the “tree trunk”, supposedly looking for Peter and not knowing they’re standing above his hiding spot the whole time.

Turns out someone didn’t close the trapdoor properly, because the second Hook steps on it, he plunges through the thing. He’s able to catch himself, but he’s got his ass and one leg dangling through this hole where it’s like a ten foot drop to the ground. All of us stage crew are literally two feet away from him offstage, just gaping at him because???? Y'all this fall looked BAD. Looked like my dude did the splits in mid air. The whiplash caused his fucking wig to come off. The audience is dead silent, all of us backstage are dead silent, the director is like already looking up how to treat a broken groin.

As the kids shove the witch into the oven, which was supposed to spark and fizz, the damn thing caught on literal fire.

The witch throws herself backwards she looks like she’s literally flying over the kids. And the kids are just standing there stunned as people run onstage with fire extinguishers.

I have also joked repeatedly that all I really need to do is stand near one of the student computers in the library and it’ll start working again.  I’ve no idea why, but for some reason errors that happen repeatedly just go away whenever I come to look at the computer.

Last week, I helped a student who was having issues with his laptop.  Multiple programs had frozen, but he hadn’t saved his paper, and luckily I was able to get it working long enough for him to save three straight days of work that he otherwise would’ve lost.  It’s worth noting that I spent most of the time I was trying to fix it whispering, “C’mon, baby, work with me” at his computer, because… just because, okay.  It’s what I do, it works, don’t question it.

Anyway, I was around late at work last night, waiting for my ride, when the student worker came back to my office and said there was a small group of students looking for me, and could I give them a hand even though I was off the clock?

Sure, why not.

I came out to find a group of six students, including the guy I helped last week, at a table clustered around one laptop.  I rolled up, said, “Hey, what can I help you with?”, and the guy said, “Can you just hang out here for a second?”

Sure, my dude.  I’m off the clock, I’m listening to a podcast, I can chill at a table with your group until my ride shows up, if you want.

So I spend some time flipping through my phone, only half paying attention, figuring they’re finishing something up and they’ll ask their question as soon as they’re done.  But after a minute, the guy says, “It worked!” and there was a chorus of excitement from the rest of the group. They all thanked me, and excused themselves to go back to class.

Turns out they had a group presentation, and the laptop they were trying to present from had froze up on them.  Not knowing what to do, this guy apparently told his group there was a computer wizard in the library, and that merely being in my presence might be enough to fix it.  To be fair, he… was not wrong.

My dad is actually my step-dad. He and my mom got together when I was eight, and got married a few years later. I never actually call him my step-dad, because as far as I’m concerned he’s just my dad.

My bio-dad has never been in the picture. I’ve never even met him. So my formative years were spent having a very complicated relationship with the concept of fathers. I both wanted a dad and didn’t need one, because my family is fairly large and I had no shortage of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins stepping in to help my mom out.

But I still always felt sad about not having a dad, y'know? Everyone else did. It made me feel lonely and kind of abandoned.

My favorite book when I was little was Papa Please Get the Moon for Me, by Eric Carle. If you’re unfamiliar, the plot is basically that this guy loves his child so much that he literally steals the moon from the sky when she asks. I LOVED that book, but, like…it also made me kind of sad, because I didn’t have a dad who would do that for me.

Fast forward to when I was older, and my (step)dad and my mom had my little brothers. When I was in high school, they were both really little, and one of them got his hands on my copy of Papa Please Get the Moon for Me, which I’d kept for nostalgia’s sake.

Little shit destroyed it. He was little, he didn’t really know any better yet, but I was DEVASTATED. I full-on sobbed. Sure, I could get another one, but it wouldn’t be the same, y'know?

Christmas that year, I open up my gifts, and there’s one from my dad in particular. It was kinda weird, because my parents never really specify when a Christmas gift is from one specifically; they just get all the kids gifts and only label who they’re to.

So I open it, intrigued, and y'all know what it was?

It was NOT a new copy of Papa Please Get the Moon for Me.

Miles’ biggest struggle to hide his secret identity? hiding his implausibly large stash of art supplies

I got my period completely unexpectedly. I hadn’t even been told a thing about it and was absolutely convinced something was wrong with me when I saw blood in my panties. I had to go, crying and scared, to my teacher. I had to sit, embarrassed and bloody, in the office and wait for my stepmom.

I was 9

The blood was thick, heavy, and I felt like I was going to throw up. My stomach rejected food, the part of my body I wasn’t even fully aware of yet was now always sticky and wet and gross and I was told it was completely and totally natural. No one told me it was okay to be afraid. No one prepared me.

“It’ll be over in a few days,” they said.

“It won’t come back until next month,” they said.

I was 10

Sleep started to elude me almost completely, and then I’d get so tired that my father had to literally drag me into a standing position so I’d start to become conscious. My stepmom didn’t explain that if my pad got full I could change it. She yelled at me because pads are expensive. I ruined almost all of my underwear because I didn’t want her to yell at me again. My dad refused to acknowledge it had happened at all. He has four daughters.

I was 11

A sharp pain gripped my side and I could barely breathe. I didn’t feel good. I begged to stay home from school. I was crying and clutching my side. Something wasn’t right.

“It’s normal,” they said.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” they said.

I passed out in science class. Woke up in the doctor’s office because my small town didn’t have a hospital and was told I’d had a ruptured ovarian cyst. I had four more cysts on my left one and at least three on my right. I needed to be on birth control and tested for PCOS.

I didn’t even know what an ovary was.

I was 12

My dad flat out refused to get me birth control. Said I didn’t need it. That there was no reason for a twelve year old to get on the pill. I’d just start having sex and who knows what else and that was that.

He’s a nurse.

I was 13

“What do you mean you’ve gone through the entire box of pads already?” my stepmother demanded, loud, shrieking. “There were 20 pads in there! How many days do you bleed?”

I didn’t know I was supposed to count.

“When does your period start? How many days between stop and start?”

I didn’t know I could count.

I started marking it all on my calendar. Some months there was nothing. Some months over half the days were filled in. I stole an entire box of pads from under the sink to hide in my room for my very own.

I was 14

New year, new calendar. I give my period tracking one to my stepmom and take her through it page by page. My periods last 10 days at the least. There is no consistent day my period begins and I show her.

“You just counted wrong,” she says.

I was 15

My legs swell. My back aches. I’ve got a headache. I puke up my dinner and shit out my breakfast five minutes after I ate it. I’ve bled all over my bed.

“You’re overreacting,” they said

“Don’t be such a baby,” they said

I was 16

I can’t eat for two straight days because if I do I will throw up. I’m not sick. I’m on my period.

It’s normal, I think.

I’m 17

I go through 40 pads this time.

It’s normal, I think.

I’m 18

I gained three pant sizes right before the blood shows up. I lay in bed all day with a heating pad across my shoulder blades, on my lower back, and one across my stomach. It doesn’t really help.

It’s normal, I think.

I’m 19

My own money. No health insurance. I moved away. Saw a doctor. I’m on birth control pills.

I’m 20

The pills have stopped working at easing my blood flow. The doctor tries a new pill. It does nothing. The doctor tries another pill. I can’t afford it. I don’t go to the doctor for four more years.

I’m 24

My girlfriend drags me to the doctor with my state health insurance. She tells the doctor about my symptoms. The doctor’s mouth opens slightly.

“That’s not normal,” she says.

I bleed for 28 days straight.

I’m diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. The doctor asks if I want an IUD. I’ve never even heard of that.

My insurance pays for it. It’s free.

“Okay,” I say.

“It’s worth a try,” I say.

I haven’t had a period in months.

I am 25

My oncologist examines my medication list. “IUD? Birth control?” he asks. “You’re married. Don’t you want kids?” No. “What about your husband.” Wife. “Oh.”

My GP is out of town. I see a new doctor. We’re discussing surgeries. Is a hysterectomy an option?

“No,” he says. “You might marry a man who wants kids.” I’m married to a woman and I don’t want kids.

My dad is a nurse. He has four daughters.

“You’re married to a woman. Why are you on birth control?”

“Because I need to be,” I say. Finally. I say. “Because I want to be.”

But they know that the kitchen has food. They know where the easily accessible cat food is. And obviously my sister and I are just Really Big Stupid Hairless cats.

It’s 7:01 and I haven’t been fed yet

It’s 5:01 and I haven’t been fed yet

It’s 10:30 and past bedtime

It’s not 10:30 but I’m tired

I want to sit in the window

I can’t find the dog and I miss her

And more!

Also, if I get up late, he’ll come into the bathroom with me and sit on the counter until I’ve taken my medication. Then he goes about his day.