Phthursday Musings: Notes from Ontario

Phthursday Musings has gone to a lot of strange places, but this is the first time we’ve gone international.

Yes, I’m in the great white north, for a business meeting, because that’s what people like me do, go north for business meetings. By “great white north” I of course mean “slightly more north than Milwaukee”.

I’ve spent a couple days walking around downtown Toronto a bit. The baseball stadium and hockey arena are somehow jammed into the middle of downtown. People are all over the place, and they’re of every color. Add it to the list of places to bring the family some day.

Now, let me tell you about fifth grade.

I went to Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School. In fifth grade, we could join King Koraliers, which was a school singing group for fifth and sixth grade. All but two members of my class joined (Jason and Scott - not that you’re reading this - I somehow still remember you two were the outliers!)

We did a Christmas program that year. By which I mean a play, which I guess more properly was a musical, since there was singing. I don’t remember what the performance was, I don’t remember the plot. (That I remember which two classmates didn’t join something but can’t tell you what musical we did should say something. Not sure what. Something.)

But, I had a bit part in the musical. Play. Performance. Whatever. I had a bit part. I was one of the peddlers.

At some point the main character(s) “walk down a street” and encounter a group of peddlers trying to sell them something. Sales with a song! There were, I don’t know, four of us, whatever. We each had maybe four lines.

We did two performances. One in the afternoon for the rest of the school, one at night for our parents.

After the first performance, our director (or whatever her title was) dismissed everyone but made the peddlers stay. I don’t remember the exact words and it kind of doesn’t matter what the exact words were, she told us we sucked and needed to practice again. In her defense, the gym teacher agreed with her. So, maybe we did suck. I don’t know.

I thought about all this last night, thinking ahead to this presentation we were supposed to be giving to people from the corporate office, feeling kind of like my role was kind of like the peddler role, not the main character, just someone there to give a few lines. Well, the presentation today was fine, so far as presentations go. We weren’t treated like shitty peddlers.

Even so, it occurs to me that the nature of the presentation wasn’t really that dissimilar from being in a play. And, well, I haven’t been in a play or musical like that since… fifth grade. Public speaking doesn’t bother me, giving presentations doesn’t bother me, but these super rehearsed things where I just chip in a couple of lines? Even if my performance goes well, I still kind of feel like nothing more than a shitty peddler.

There is a song, incidentally, called “The Pedlar”, on Polvo’s In Prism. Like the rest of the album it’s fantastic. No proper video for it but here’s the song:

I can’t really be in Ontario and not share this:

And suddenly it’s almost midnight in Toronto, so I guess I better wrap this up! There’ll be a Running Around Illinois installment soon, maybe two depending on how the weekend goes, and look forward next week to a whole lot of musings about playoffs.

For now, let’s just say, maybe for a minute, things were looking up today: