It’s November 3; Tuesday. As I sit at my laptop at 7am after a sleepless night writing this little piece of fluff, citizens of our country are getting ready to exercise their right to vote in what I view as the most existential election I’ve witnessed in my lifetime. If a normal election year always carries its share of angst, this one comes on the heels of the human race having borne the COVID-19 pandemic for the last eight months.
It’s November 3; Tuesday. The beginning of a month that is normally a gentle prelude to the fanfare and hullabaloo of Christmas – we spend this time reminding ourselves to be thankful, and we celebrate that thankfulness on a random Thursday at the end of the month. Ordinarily, I might take to Facebook and write some pithy expression of gratitude for some trifling thing each day just to show how grateful I am for all I have.
But the dumpster fire that is 2020 has made it a real challenge to exercise gratitude and thankfulness the way I usually would. Don’t get me wrong – acknowledging all of the good that remains in our lives despite the condition of the world is probably more important than ever this year. And I’m all for it. I need it. We all do. But on this Election Day, while I could write something profound about democracy or how grateful I am for the ability to make my voice heard by voting, I’m going to write about spatulas instead.
In many respects, living through a pandemic has shuttered our normal social lives, depriving us of the natural meeting places of bars and restaurants, and of human contact outside our own households. Our inability to gather in large numbers, particularly indoors, has hamstrung entire industries from food service to higher education. What I miss most are the performing arts: live theater, the symphony, even just checking out a fun cover band at a local festival. Although I mostly transitioned from performer to patron of the performing arts as I became an adult, I spent a lot of time on stage or backstage when I was growing up. (Plus, I’m an only child AND a Leo, so I never met a damn spotlight I didn’t like…).
As an adult, I look back and appreciate how many life skills, including skills I exercise every day as a lawyer, I gained by being a theater kid. I could spend multiple posts talking about those skills and how well they’ve served me over the years (like being able to project my voice well enough to be heard through a facial covering, for example….), but I want to spend this one talking about the people I shared the theater with.
Before high school (and in many ways, during and after), I never felt like I fit in anywhere. I did stuff that put me around other kids my age – swim team, girl scouts, even a brief stint in soccer – but those were never my people. Early in my freshman year, I signed up to audition for the fall play, and as soon as I walked into that auditorium, I knew it was a place where I would find acceptance, a safe place, a family. And I was right. Over four years, I formed bonds that last to this day. I found my people. We didn’t drink; we didn’t get high; we didn’t cause trouble or get into any. We would just sit around, order pizza, and crack each other up. For hours – we’d just make each other laugh. In the rearview mirror, it’s almost unbearably wholesome.
In the spring of 1993, the musical was Bye Bye Birdie – a production replete with ‘50s nostalgia that every high school theater program has done since the beginning of time. All of my friends were in it, and with the exception of Romeo & Juliet some years later, it’s the show experience I look back on with the most fondness. One night, my friends and I bribed my BFF’s older brother, who ran the sound board, to play a little joke on everyone during intermission. As the house lights went up, he tapped into the speaker system and said, “And now for a word from the sponsor of tonight’s production, the great folks at……Spatula City!” He then cut to what was undoubtedly a homemade cassette recording pulled off of a TV or radio of the Spatula City parody commercial that came from the Weird Al movie UHF. It was a deep pull – none of our parents knew what a Weird Al was, and could not understand why there would ever be an entire store devoted to selling nothing but spatulas.
We thought it was hilarious.
Admittedly, you probably had to be there…
Fast-forward almost 30 years, and I was chatting with a co-worker yesterday about nothing in particular, but I made a comment about how it’s always the spatulas that prevent my kitchen drawers from opening. His immediate response was to sing, “Spatula City! We sell spatulas….and that’s all!” I hadn’t thought about Bye Bye Birdie in years, but that memory came back to me like it happened yesterday. I remember how that auditorium smelled; I remember the texture of the fabric on the flip-up seats; I remember putting on red lipstick before the show and the place on the props table where I had to grab my phone for The Telephone Hour.
But most of all, it made me think of my people. My soulmates. And the way we could make each other laugh until our sides hurt, just by being ourselves. It may feel like joy is in short supply these days, but maybe we just need to look for it in different places. For the ability to experience the simplest of moments of great joy with my people, I am truly grateful.
Lawyer At Lunch 