hot-dog tag

The few people that know about this blog are usually warned: it’s my drunk-pretentious blog with narcissistic elements. But I met my superior yesterday! Not just one actually: a whole group… I had my first lesson in improvisational theater. A person that used to be on the management team at my work told me about this. She said it was fantastic to be in a place where status and origins did not matter. And after taking these classes she never felt that what she did in her professional life (and in her personal?), was too embarrassing or awkward sine they had already done worse stuff on stage. Boy do I need that! Queen of saying the wrong thing and stepping on peoples toes: that’s me! So I signed up with hopes of becoming a better person.

It started on the application. They asked if we had any pervious experience. Eeeehh… Isn’t life in it self a big improvisation? How much of what we do is rehearsed? Or even slightly resembles what we had aimed for?! My “roll” is to be a kick-ass career woman. Guess if I improvise! Not a day goes by with out me thinking that someone is bound to reveal that I’m just pretending. But not to give too much away I just wrote “not really” in the box.

The group seam like a really cool bunch. All ages, men and women, artsy and white collar. Appears to be a large spectrum of people. To warm up we played tag. I hate tag. I’m not good at chasing and I can never get away from the person that is the tag person. But this was different. It was “hot-dog tag”! The same person was the tagiee (my own word!) the whole time (or at least until our teacher told us to a new name). Instead of saying tag you had to say hot-dog. The person that got “hot-dogged” had to stand still, look sad and repeat “hot-dog” in a sad way until two other people came and held hands around the hot-dog and said “hot-dog in a bun”. And you where saved! Yeah I know: it sounds silly. But it was fun – especially considering all the other stupid/embarrassing games there are out there.

During the brake we sat two and two and interviewed each other. We had three questions:

• Who – alive or dead – would you like to meet?
• If you where to invent something: what would it be?
• What are your fears and expectations with this class?

After the brake we went up on stage two by two and introduced the other person. All the other people wanted to meet Jesus, Che Guevarra, their dead grandfather etc. I wanted to meet Elvis Presley. I mean really: who wouldn’t want to meet Elvis?! I’ve had the hots for him since I was a kid. Well, he died when I was a kid, but anyway! Come on! And then there was the invention. The majority of people wanted to invent time machines. As if we have time to spare you know. Make it right the first time and you don’t have to travel back and forth to try to correct things. One guy wanted to invent fuel that did not ruin the environment. There where other environmental and “feed the world” inventions as well. A couple of really cool ones (read: pretentious) like making time be like gel, so time wouldn’t be so volatile and you would sense and experience it better. And a few more in that fashion. What did I want to invent? Strings – almost invisible – with tiny hooks on so that you can hang picture frames on your wall. It should be so that the pictures hang even, even if you have strings next to each other and it should be easy to switch if you want new pictures. How did I come up with this fabulous – save the world – kind of invention you might ask your self? Well: I tried to hang my pictures on fishing-rod and tiny hooks for pictures all this weekend. It was not an easy task and they do NOT hang straight. I had to run to the hardware store, IKEA and my dad’s tool box three days in a row just to get all the supplies together.

It was a fun class and I did learn one thing: I’m not as pretentious as I might think :-)