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.

    

           

The time I should have thrown it In

     I hit on 13 words of truth last week. Actually they were handed to me like a Café Americano for my writing enjoyment. You don’t see the miracle if you throw in the towel. I was able to write about the value of hanging in there in order to see God’s work through. It was about keeping the faith. My writing and Monday blogging factored right into it. But I also mentioned that there have been times that I should have thrown in the towel, but I didn’t. I wondered how I could share the value of giving up.

     The incident that stands out was after we came back from two years on the mission field in Budapest, Hungary. I had taught English as a second language to public high school students. I came to like a lot of the kids that were considered troublesome by the rest of the faculty. I became known as a teacher not easily rattled and the more wild students took a liking to me. It’s quite an ego boost to come in as an inexperienced teacher from a small part of the world like Hawaii and do well in a big city in Central Europe. I was rather proud of myself.

     When we got back to Maui I was able to finally get a job as a substitute teacher. To get into the computer system’s joblist I needed at least one school to sign me on as a preferred sub. The principal of an intermediate school who had once been my high school councilor remembered me and gave me a chance. I started teaching in October 1998.

It wasn’t long before I ended up teaching a class where the regular teacher was on long term disability. I was thrilled that I seemed to have secured a long-term job. The teacher taught math but had asked to teach art. So there were two math classes and four art classes and one prep period. I learned that there had been several substitute teachers in this position already who had given up. I soon saw why. Not only was there a tremendous amount or planning and grading, (what subs don’t normally have to do) but the kids were… I can’t think of a polite description.  To put it bluntly, in all my years teaching before and after with rowdy Russian kids before and street gang members and emotionally disturbed kids after, the kids at this particular intermediate school were the worst kids I’ve ever encountered. They were rude and deliberately disruptive. Not all the kids, of course were like this, but enough that the whole classes seemed to feed in.

I thought that there had to be some good kids there that wanted to learn. I thought that I had handled worse. (I hadn’t) I made long-term lesson plans for the art class using art projects I had learned in college. I tried my best to teach algebra to a class of 30 something but couldn’t turn my back to write on the board without being hit with crumbled paper.

I came home to my little apartment each day angry and tired. Prajna was in her third trimester with Sarah, our fourth child. Harrison was having trouble getting along in kindergarten at the school that preceded the one I was teaching at. I should have walked into the office at my school and told them I would be leaving that class in two days.

     Instead I took a week off when Sarah was born and then went back to work with the same class. Some of the teachers I worked with got me a gift card as a congratulations present for Sarah. The teachers seemed to appreciate me. Even some of the students seemed happy to have me back and complained about the substitute for me. But within days the bad kids were worse than ever. Finally one day a kid was sitting with his chair pulled up to some side cabinets pounding on them with his fists. I walked over and asked him to stop and he didn’t. I calmly tipped his chair and he tumbled out onto the floor, smiled and splayed out his arms and hands. I had technically assaulted a student. The principal came to my classroom that afternoon and dismissed me. I should have been grateful to that kid for that.

     I should have walked away from that job as soon as they told me to do report cards in November. I was under-qualified for such a job. But I never would have admitted it. My pride kept me there as if I had something to prove. And something more than pride held me there, something I still struggle with today. I felt the need to be needed. I still struggle with this. It's called codependency.

     There is no question that the school desperately needed a good teacher in there that would create some consistency and care about the kids. That’s what I tried to do in earnest. And I was doing that, but all the while it was taking from me more that I gave. No paycheck would have been enough for what I did without support from the administration and leverage in disciplining the kids. I couldn't do enough for that situation or for those kids and I didn’t want to admit that I was powerless and just needed to walk away. And there was a part of me that felt that need to be needed and every day I felt so needed. 

   And here is the amazing thing: One would think that there had been a satisfaction in that job. But there wasn’t. Because in an unhealthy condition like codependency if I try to fulfill my need to be needed in an unhealthy way it will just drain me and perpetuate the condition, just like any other addiction, hurt, hang-up or habit. There is no satisfaction in an unhealthy situation like that. And I just went back for more.

And what about that miracle I would miss from throwing in the towel? Truth be told, by not giving up, I was relying on myself rather than God. That’s idolatry. The miracle was that we would survive without me sticking to that job.

     For the rest of the school year I taught at other schools. I ended up back at that intermediate school sometimes but never as a preferred sub and I avoided long-term jobs after that. At the elementary school that I had attended as a kid I did a lot of work for the fifth graders there and always looked forward to those kids.

     And today I am learning about codependency and boundaries. It’s hard to need to be needed and to try to find a healthy way to be needed where I don’t get burned out at the end. It was a long and rather unpleasant story today. Those kids are all in their mid 20’s now and I wonder how some of them are doing. It was a hard lesson I learned from them and I’m glad I am where I am today, not just thousands of miles away from that school, but hopefully somewhat wiser too.