All right, that's enough now

When I was about 8 years old, my best friend Brad and I put on a "play."

We lived in Asia. My parents were part of a small expat community that had dinner parties, poker nights, and the occasional play, which they would produce quite elaborately with full costumes and sets in our fine expatriate homes. Brad and I wanted to produce our own play.

My mother helpfully invited some of the other families to the play, as well as some of my father's colleagues. She made hors d'oeuvres; audience members brought scotch as ducats. My mother set up chairs in the living room, our stage.

We had no plan, no script.

We were, however, Cub Scouts members with a fondness for playing "war" in the jungle that extended for miles from our back garden after a small peanut field and The Big Rocks. The play would be about the Civil War.

The audience settled into their seats. Brad stood in the middle of the living room in his Cub Scout uniform. Pointing his toy rifle in the direction of my parents bedroom, where I awaited my stage entry bedizened in my own Cub Scout uniform, Brad fired. And said "bang."

I splotched ketchup on my pants for blood and limped into the living room with my rifle for a crutch (John Wayne reference). My first ever theatrical line, delivered with an 8 year-old's bathos, went something on the order of "I'm shot."

Brad and I then needed to set up the tent. We had, however, neglected to consider that the tent required stakes. Two minutes into the play, we were rolling in a collapsed tent in the living room without a clue as to what to do next. The unfortunate plight in which we found ourselves produced slumberparty giggles.

My mother, deus ex machina, stepped in, "all right, you boys, that's enough now."

A couple of months later, having survived the humiliation of the first stagger-through, we announced the staging of a much improved version of the original. This performance would take place in the peanut field, more generous terrain for pitching the tent. We envisioned rows of seats in the middle of the field. Alas, everyone was busy with other duties and events on the day of the curtain-raising. Our immediate neighbors assured us that they would watch the play from their living room window....

Some remembrances after reading this article.