53. In my heart of hearts I believed it to be true

A boy walks to school. It’s 1985. That afternoon he’ll audition for a role in the school musical. Or that’s his intention.

The musical is Oklahoma.

His school puts on two musicals a year. It has an ambitious music teacher. Along with the musicals there is a choir, a recorder band, and a ukulele ensemble. A lot happens at the school. Camping trips. Book fairs. Sometimes the boy’s memories feel made up. How could so many things happen in one place?

He remembers his first romantic kiss. 10 years old, on a camping trip. Angela S., the girl he’d share the math prize with. He remembers Natasha coming to his tent to tell him Angie wants you to brush her hair.

He is the youngest person at the audition. No other 4th-graders are there. It’s a well established, unwritten rule that roles in the musicals go to 5th- and 6th-graders. But he goes anyway.

He’s been told he sings well, and, in this iteration of the boy, he believes it. He goes because he believes he can sing, and because he enjoys pretending to be other people.

The person he most enjoys pretending to be is the cool person. The cool person acts with instinctive confidence. They also have really great shoes. When the boy pretends to be the cool person he’s usually giving an interview about a novel he’s just written. At nine the boy can think of nothing cooler than writing a novel, even cooler than being the captain of the Stanley Cup-winning team.

In the future the boy will not believe he sings well, so he won’t sing. Or rather, he’ll forget that he wants to sing. Eventually he’ll remember again. This remains one of the largest blessings of his life.

The auditions happen in groups acting in a scene together. He’s trying out for the part of Jud. Wikipedia describes Jud as a “sinister and frightening farmhand”. The boy is neither of these things.

Before the time comes for his group to take the stage, the boy changes his mind. He has spent an hour weighing the possible positive and negative outcomes, and decides the math isn’t in his favour. Feigning tummy upset, he leaves the gym and heads home.

More than 30 years later two of the boy’s friends will write a musical. This time, he does try out.

I am always astonished by kindness and never astonished by cruelty, and in this way my mind feels broken. - Craig Mod