Or The Time When I…

Tried out for a Disneyland parade.

To this day, I am trying to wrap my head around how this happened at all. All I can think of is that the plan was to go with another person or a group of people and they all stiffed me?? Who knows, but it did happen and I think it went a little something like this:

I was unemployed. I lived in California. I was single. I probably figured “hey, maybe I’ll get a job running a churro cart if the audition goes awry.” Which, if you can only imagine…it did. I leave my house at the crack of dawn. Who even knows what I am wearing. Probably sweats and a t-shirt. I get there and everyone is wearing like dance clothes? Um…first clue that I do not belong here (cue music from Sesame Street “one of these kids is not like the others” and by others I mean about 5,000 people in a line that wraps around and around and around the Disneyland side lot).

Compelled by some inertia that I cannot explain…I STAY IN LINE. I figure “what the heck?” and start chatting people up (or eavesdropping, really). I discover that most of these kids (I am the only person here that cannot be classified as a kid) are in high school, belong to professional dance companies or acting schools, have agents and are pretty much trying to become the next big Disney star. To say this would be the second clue that I am in the wrong place would be an understatement.

The line keeps on winding around each and every roped off pillar and I am now starting to believe that it is my divine destiny to be the next big Disney star at the ripe old age of twenty-six because I cannot otherwise explain why I AM STILL IN LINE an hour and a half later.

Finally! A Disney employee appears telling us that it’s almost time and to have our paperwork or headshots ready? Um, seriously clues three, four, five, seventy million!! No, I do not have any paperwork or a headshot (unless my driver license works and it actually is a really good picture). I won’t detail the happenings once I was inside…mostly because I cannot remember and also because it begins to blur with the memory of me painfully performing a mime-stuck-in-a-bubble *performance* I had to give in a high school theatre class (it was an elective!).

All I can remember is that there were dance moves (one called “the wizard” that I can actually do, thank you very much), count offs “5,6,7,8…,” hand motions, over-exaggerated facial expressions, spins, turns, shuffles, ball changes, pirouettes…and then there was this: “okay, would everyone except the tall girl in the back who moves like Gumby please follow me to the next room for Princess wigs and costume fittings. Yes, even the elderly woman sitting down in the next room minding her own business and eating a sandwich, even her. Just not the tall one in the back.”

They didn’t even give me a parting good bye or high five (that I would have totally been good at). Not even a churro.

To this day, I cannot believe I did that or what in the world compelled me to stay in line. I remember that it took serious guts for me to stick the thing through, it was so out of my comfort zone. And even though I danced like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipsgYiyTpNc, I am glad I stayed in line and just gave it a whirl. I did get a call back two months later to be a driver for one of the light up bugs in the Electrical Parade, but I had already secured employment at a place where my paycheck was guaranteed to pay my rent and feed me something other than churros and turkey legs.