Meeting on the Way

     The last Monday of February, 1980. It’s a miserable day in intermediate school. A skinny, slouching kid in a green windbreaker drags his feet past the classroom doors. His backpack is hanging off one shoulder. He had hoped for no math homework. But he's got three pages of multiplication. He’s in the second lowest math class and can never seem to concentrate on the problems. He would like English more if he didn’t have to spell well. He likes science, but gets marked down because his work is so sloppy and hard for the teacher to read. He likes band, but can’t really take a snare drum home to practice and doesn’t have much passion for it. In fact, he doesn’t have a lot of passion for anything other than trying to be different than everyone else. If he’s learned anything in school, it’s that being an outcast is easier if it’s a choice.

     He has missed the bus because he had to stay after school to do extra math. It’s about a mile and a half walk home, all downhill. He doesn’t mind. Sometimes it’s better than riding the bus anyway. So he walks out of the school grounds and starts the quiet walk home down Lahainaluna Road. 

     There is little traffic until a gleaming silver car seems to burst out of nowhere. It skids to a stop, gull-wing doors open and a man bumps his head as he gets out. The man looks at the boy and smiles.

This is it, the boy thinks. The aliens that are from my true home are here to take me home.

Instead, the stranger walks to the boy and looks around. He's quiet and rocks on his toes. Finally he points to the vacant fields all around and speaks.

     “Someday this will all be houses. That sugar mill down there will be gone. It’s all going to go away. Nothing stays the same, kid. You had a lousy day at school today?”

     The kid nods. What, is this stranger a time traveler? No, that car looks like it ought to fly like the ones in the stories he’s made up. The stranger continues:

     “I’ve got news for you. You’re not an alien from another planet, okay? I know that’s an easy thing to imagine. And when you think that, it kind of exempts you from the responsibility of trying to get along. I mean, it’s okay to be an introvert. But you’re not as different as you think. Even those popular kids have anxieties.

The boy looks from the car to the stranger. The man wears glasses and a long black coat, jeans and boots. The man goes on:

I just wanted to come along and tell you, it gets better. You are a lot smarter than you think, just because you freeze up doing three-digit multiplication, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid. You’ve got a great imagination. You know those stories you make up with your toy cars and spaceships? Yeah, I know, you’re not too old for toys, don’t worry. You keep doing that. It exercises your mind to create worlds like that. Don’t ever stop.

     The boy is shocked. This stranger knows about the worlds.

     You made up a story the other night too, as you were going to sleep. You do that also. The story was about two guys doing a rescue mission to a strange planet.

     The stranger sits on a low wall. He looks at the boy with the look that is sad, but proud.

     “I shouldn’t have come and done this. So I’ll just tell you the truth and then fix it. It’s true, David. I did travel back in time. I thought I would come back and see you on the week of your 13^th birthday and then I couldn’t resist saying something. I mean, I remember what it was like. And I wanted to tell you that it will get better. You’ll make some new friends. In a few years, you won’t have such a miserable time every day at school. And when you grow up, oh man, your wife will be the prettiest, sweetest girl ever.

     At this the boy makes a face.

“Now calm down. I know you still don’t like girls now right? At least that’s what you like to think. But here, I’ll prove I’m you from the future, something you never told anyone. That girl who looked out the school bus window at you? I know her name, so do you. Yeah, I know how you feel, that little crush. No, you won’t marry her. At the end of this school year, you’ll never see her again.”

The boy’s knees feel weak. But more than the gelatinous fright he feels, there is a thrill of relief. This person really does understand everything. Questions start bubbling up in his mind. What other advice could his future self give?

“I’m not going to tell you anything else. Well there is a lot more I wish I could tell you. I would like to tell you that in your future, you should make better choices. If it’s something that feels good right away, but you regret it later, then you shouldn’t do it at all. I wish I could tell you so much. Buy stock in Apple, learn to drive a stick shift, don’t watch the movie Serenity until you’ve watched the Firefly series. But no, you’ll have to make your choices and live with them. Anything I tell you to do different, it might compromise you meeting and falling in love with her, the one.  

The stranger beckons the boy close, pulls off his eyeglasses and points to the blue of his eyes.

“Look here. You’re going to forget we met. But you’re going to feel better today. You’re birthday will be fun this week. Life will get better. Forget everything else I said.”

The stranger almost stands, but looks back at the boy.

“But remember this too. Write that story down. The story about the space rescue mission, it’s not publishable, but get a notebook and write it down anyway. You are going to find that you love to write. It’s a better escape from reality than what you do now. You were born on Earth, deal with it. Go on home now. Happy Birthday.

The kid in the green windbreaker turns and walks down the hill and the stranger watches him go. The kid is still slouching and dragging his feet. But he’s looking up.

The Diamond Lil' Revue

     “Well,” one of the kids said. “We had been wanting to paint the ceiling black, right?”

     I blinked in surprise at the jokey attitude, but the students of the Baldwin High School drama guild were dealing with it as best they could. Their drama room had burned overnight. An arsonist had set fire to it. The damage was extensive but it wasn’t a total loss. They were in a middle of a show's run, The Second Annual Diamond Lil’ Revue. Baldwin Theatre Guild was able to move the venue to the playhouse of another local community theater. The temporary loss of the drama room was devastating as well as the shock of the assault on each person who held that place dear.

     But as loved as that room seemed, it wasn’t the walls and ceiling and the clutter of props and costumes that provided the magic. It was the kids, the alumnus and the adults who put so much of their lives and souls into the theater program there. I have never seen such talent in my life. For such a little island as Maui, there seemed to be a lot of burgeoning talents. Several have moved on to professional carriers in theater and film and music.

     And there amongst all the drama on and off stage, the teen angst drama, the students in some of the most decisive and confusing times of their lives, were the adults. The drama teacher, Ms. Loudon, was like a mother, lion tamer, mentor and teacher of all things theater.  Now retired, never replaced. Ms. Loudon is the type of person who comes along so rarely and touches so many lives that no amount of gratitude would ever match the love she showed. Other adults at the theater were local theater buffs, school alumnus, even kids from other high schools that didn’t have a good theater program. (That was me.)

     I saw parents dressing in outlandish costumes and yucking it up or acting down the house. But one parent in particular was the one who played Diamond Lil in the Diamond Lil’ Revue. If you only saw her onstage and didn’t know her as a person you would be hard pressed to believe this. But stage presence and talent were completely outshone by a full heart of gold in Rita.  Her energy onstage was only surpassed by her aloha offstage.

I was privileged to get to see the first few Diamond Lil’ Revues. They were formed as a royalty-free type of show full of song and dance strung together with a plotline. Rita hosted the shows as the title character. The first year set the tone for the rest. It was an old western dance hall. There was bar, a jail and of course a big stage with musical numbers, dance and a melodrama. The show was well received and they did it again the next year set on the Mason-Dixon line. That was the year of the fire. But the show went on. And the next year was a riverboat theme.

I got to perform for two of the three weeks for that 1985 show. And that was one of the quirky things about those shows. They would run two or three weekends for maybe 9 or 10 shows. No two were ever quite the same. Some acts were rotated to give more kids a chance to perform. Sometimes new acts were added in. Inevitably there was a lot of improvisation onstage.

The next year was a speakeasy. I only got to watch that one when I came home from college. Actually one night my friend let me take his part and be Elliot Ness at the end.

The next year was a Broadway showcase. I helped develop the plot for that show and then did the first weekend as a janitor and a magician. Then I went back to college for the spring. The cast of the show bought me a plane ticket to come do the last weekend with them. I will never forget that.

I missed the next couple of shows. They had a Christmas theme. When I moved back to Maui after college, Desert Storm was on everyone’s mind. I helped develop the plot for the next Diamond Lil’ which was a USO canteen theme. And for the next three shows I had the thrill of working alongside Rita as Eugene Toro, clipboard wielding assistant to Diamond Lil’. We did two USO shows. In 1994, Diamond Lil’ Revue had a theme that some folks had wanted since the very beginning.  With the blessing of Ms. Loudon, a bunch of guys finally sat down and wrote out the plot and setting for what turned out to be one of my favorites, the science fiction themed Restaurant at the End of the Universe show. We had a blast.

We did one more USO show. Then I did my last Diamond Lil’ in 1996. It was a Nashville/Hillbilly theme, still full of talent and friends. At the close of the show I was waiting word to see if I would be going to Hungary to teach.

I came back to Maui two years later but was not able to participate in Diamond Lil’ that year. I sat in the audience with a severely sprained ankle. (That wasn’t what kept me offstage)and I wished I could be up there. It was the last show I saw on Maui.

And all that was just my experiences. So many others were able to do more. It was a wonderful part of growing up that went on into my adult years. For one USO show Ms. Loudon, (you didn’t call her Sue even when you grew up) asked me to write a letter for a girl to read onstage. The show had her as a movie star reading a letter from parents to their son on the radio. I wrote the letter and was very pleased with it. Then Ms Loudon lost it so I wrote another that I thought was better. She lost that too and I wrote an even better one. Today I wonder if she kept tossing them away, knowing that I could do better. That was what it was all about. We rarely ran the show fully through until opening night. Kids were challenged to do their best and have tremendous faith in themselves and in others. And today the world is a better place. Not just for that room that burned on night in 1985, but for the passion and life that no flame could quench.