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The Card by Carla Lewis December 13, 2006 The card read, "For bravery above and beyond the call of duty," was unsigned and wedged into one of those little plastic picks in a Christmasey flower arrangement that featured small silver musical instruments. In lieu of a bar for a uniform or a purple heart, I was awarded this gift by my theatre arts class at the end of two very trying productions of "Santa Claus is Missing." Each semester, my theatre arts class learned play production, the basics of acting, some set-building techniques, but the goal was always the production of at least one one-act play. This particular semester there were twelve girls in the class and one boy, all very bright, enthusiastic, and talented. Most of the girls were good singers and quick studies, so we chose a play with music, 'santa Claus is Missing,? because both the good and bad elves were of indeterminate sex, and only Mrs. Claus and Santa needed to be represented correctly. Everyone was happy, everyone had a role, I played the piano accompaniment, and the play was scheduled to go "on the road" for two performances at a local elementary school shortly before Christmas. All of the kids were to be at school at 7:30 A.M. to load the vans and pick-up truck with props and costumes and to leave the high school at 8 and perform at 8:30, with a later performance at 10. At 7 A.M. I was seated at my desk working on lesson plans, when the young man playing Santa sidled in the door, flattened himself to the doorframe, threw his head back, and uttered a heart-rending moan. Having taught high school for 30 years and realizing the penchant for drama inherent in all teenagers, I merely said, "Good morning," and went back to my work. Santa hesitated just a moment, then dashed headlong across the room, threw himself into a seat in front of my desk and smashed his head onto the desktop. His shoulders writhed rhythmically as he went through a performance of (non-productive) retching. Now, there were exactly two possibilities for this performance: the boy could have been seriously ill or he may simply have been a victim of stage fright. Both scenarios required careful handling, so I gently inquired if he were ill. He answered with a moan. "Do you want me to call your mom and have her come get you?" Moan with a negative twist. I felt his forehead; he didn't feel feverish, but my degree is in English, not medicine, so I asked a few more questions: "Did you throw up before you came to school?" Answer: moan "Is your stomach upset? Do you think you have to go to the bathroom?" Moan I'd heard our school nurse try this one on younger kids, and although I felt goofy asking the question I said, "Do you think if you went to the potty you might feel better?" Moan. Finally, I tried my best, never-fails healing trick: I took him across the hall to the science lab and ran cold water on his wrists. Result: quieter moans. The girls were arriving and looked positively panicked. What would we do if Santa couldn't perform? Gently, I inquired, "Do you think you'll be able to go on?" Moan One of the more forceful and less tactful girls said, "OK, Jim. What's it gonna be? Are you going on or are you going home? Cut the drama." Answer: Moan We loaded the vans, shoved Santa into a back seat with some ginger ale, and left for the school. Once there, Santa lay on the tile in the fetal position as we set our stage on the gym floor. We had standing, hinged "book" flats as wings right and left, and the piano was on stage left facing the actors. The children would sit on the floor directly in front of the actors and would participate in parts of the play. All was ready. We all wished each other to break a leg, and the play began. Santa, despite his makeup and padding, looked a mite peaked, but I figured adrenaline would get him through. I was playing the insipid musical score and the girls were doing a fine job being bright and merry to compensate for Santa's dour expression. Suddenly, I noticed that Santa's body, positioned directly in front of the kindergartners, was thrashing in a series of "S" curves and that he had part of his beard jammed in his mouth. The horror of the situation dawned on me: what if Santa barfed on a child? Imagine the emotional scars! I had to get Santa out of there! I stood up behind the piano and, in my sweetest voice, said, "Santa looks a bit tired. Why not go backstage and lie down for a minute before you deliver your gifts?" He stumbled behind the stage right wing. The girls, no fools, covered for his lines, and because he was going to be captured by some bad elves in the story anyway, he could legitimately be missing for a few minutes. My mind was racing feverishly as I played the piano, watched the action, and wondered what to do next. I felt someone tugging on my skirt. One of the elves had crawled across the playing area, behind the wings, and to the piano to tell me, "Jim barfed all over back there. What should we do?" My answer, "Don't slip in it and fall." She said, "I'll get him on his feet to do the final scene. I still think he's just scared." I wasn't sure, but after that performance, I found him, again, in the fetal position on the tiles. I sat him up, gave him a drink of water, and said, "Can you get a grip and go on?" Moan. "OK, that's it." I found the school nurse, she let him lie down on a cot in the health room, and I ran back to my kids to decide what to do. We had ten minutes until the intermediate grades arrived. "You've gotta do it," the girls said. "We can't disappoint those little kids." The elementary music teacher stuck her head in the door at that point. "Mrs. Belknap, do you have a few minutes to play the piano for our play?" I asked. Yes, she did. Two of the girls took her to the piano, went over the changes we had made, and ran quickly through the score. The girls had stripped Jim of his costume and me of my skirt and yanked the Santa pants on me. Even with staples and pins, the crotch of the pants was at my knees. I couldn't wear the Santa padding because there wasn't enough of my torso to support it---it stuck out like a ruff at the neck, so this Santa would have to be thin. When the kids buttoned me in the jacket and added the belt, I found I could hardly walk or bend what with the constriction of the crotch at my legs and the 8 inch wide belt wrapped around me about three times and secured with paper clips. We put the spats on over the pants---luckily, I had on black dress boots---ran a white grease stick backwards on my eyebrows to make them grey, added jolly red cheeks, put on the wig and hat, and as we heard the children enter the gym, the girls held the beard in front of me to hook the cord over my ears. At that precise moment, a howl of disgust, fright, and panic issued simultaneously from all 13 mouths?mine included. The beard was chuck full of vomit. Well, we did the only thing we could think of-- we flicked the bigger bits into the garbage can, soaked up the liquid with tissues from our purses, and constructed a little buffer zone that resembled a panti-liner from tissues and affixed it to the beard with bobby pins. The play went on. I knew most of the lines, but carried a script surreptitiously with me. I had a hard time staying in character because of the vile smell right under my nose and terror. My dialogue went like this: "Ho, ho, ho, boys and girls" ...erm "HO, HO, HO, boys and girls" the second time about two octaves lower. Imagine our amazement when the teachers told us later that they didn't sense anything was amiss. One little kid did, though. All the kids wrote us thank you notes. You know, the kind on that huge, woody paper with place to draw at the top. One note had a picture of a very skinny, distraught-looking Santa on the top and the following note on the bottom: "The play was very good. Thank you, but there was something about that Santa." That's how I got the flower arrangement. And, the real Santa had recovered nicely by lunch time. One of those Christmas miracles. About the author: I'm a retired English teacher...I love being retired, but I also loved teaching. Life is good! | | | |
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