To Be or Not To Be.....That Is The Question

The Old Man has been acting again. Not acting up this time; just acting. The annual Christmas Cantata was presented at our church last night. There was a drama portion. In a moment of weakness 3 months ago, I agreed to take on the role of Mike Hollis, a somewhat clueless and insensitive husband to Kelly who was in the throes of pre-Christmas stress to such a degree she was ready to melt down like Frosty the Snowman caught in a tanning booth. Thanks to some very talented other folks, we managed to pull it off without embarrassing ourselves. Someone asked me afterwards, "You must have done a lot of this sort of thing". I replied, "Once....50 years ago when I was a senior in High School."


Tradition dictated at Bedford High that the senior class would conduct several fund-raisers in order to finance the Easter weekend debacle known as the Sr. Trip to New York. One of the prime vehicles was the Senior Play. So, there I was.....suddenly cast in the male lead opposite a sweet girl named Fran. I was Paul to her Annabelle. In the play, The Cat and the Canary, all the surviving relatives of Cyrus West had gathered at his mansion to hear the reading of his will.


Things were spooky enough and it got even creepier as the play unfolded. Written in 1921, It had all the elements of an old silent movie; an escaped lunatic, some shallow and greedy relatives, a monster behind the secret panel, and a climactic fight scene. We carefully rehearsed the fight scene. We went for realism, even to the extent of having my antagonist bite down on a capsule filled with catsup to simulate bleeding from the heroic punch I was to deliver just in time to save the day. All went well during the performance with no missed or forgotten lines. The big scene came and I prepared to "slug" Tommy. In the heat of the moment, Tommy forgot to lean back with the fake punch and instead, leaned forward. I caught him squarely on the chin and his fall to the stage floor was incredibly realistic to say the least. When we helped him to his feet, his eyes had all the sparkle of wax paper. He shook his head a couple of times, and we moved on. The capsule filled with "blood"? Tommy swallowed it.


I've thought a lot about that long-ago acting experience during the preparation for our little program the other night. I had relegated it to my mental safe deposit box and hadn't taken it down off the shelf for many years. I dug out my old annual and started rummaging around. The memories were there.
Three of my cast mates are gone now. Fran, Kenny, and Donnie now perform in the never ending play titled Eternity where I'm quite sure they are getting the rave reviews they so rightly deserve.

Hercules, Eat Your Heart Out

The Old Man has never had much of a "bod". "Hunk" in my vocabulary generally meant a serving of cheese. Matter of fact, as I grew and developed, I seemed to go from looking much like a hockey stick with a nose to a football with legs. I don't recall much of an in-between. Like most young boys, I fancied myself potential superhero material. A quick glance in the mirror, however, drove home the message, "We've got some work to do here, bud".

All of us in the Park Street Battalion were avid comic book connoisseurs. Our much traded reading library ran the gamut from Westerns through Crime making stops along the way at Mickey, Donald and friends and Archie and the gang. Running through all of these genres was one commonality; they all had space allocated to selling something. From X-ray glasses to a ventriloquist's 'secret' device, the back panel of the comics were loaded with those "must haves" that drilled directly into a boy's brain. Who wouldn't want X-ray glasses? After all, there were some rumblings going on deep inside that we had not yet felt, but if we could have, we could not yet identify or understand. We just knew we needed those glasses.

Far and away the one that captured my attention most often was the little cartoon story from the Charles Atlas folks. There was usually some hapless chap on the beach with his girl friend. A bully would come by and kick sand in the poor fellow's face and when confronted, the dirty scoundrel would punch his lights out. The story went on to show how the Atlas course would result in a brand new man who went back to the beach and took his just revenge. The locale and scenario might change but the story and the ending never did.

I never ordered the course. There wasn't extra money around for such things in our house, so I never even brought it up. I attempted to understand how the exercises worked and gave it a pretty half-hearted attempt to mimic them, but without success. Here are 'Before and After' photos of my efforts.

By the way, even though Charles Atlas died in the early 1970's, the company he founded still exists. Give them a look if you're so inclined.

I went on to learn about things like metabolism and genetics....about reps and resistance. And somehow they all managed to conspire against me in later quests to become the chiseled superhero figure I just knew was my destiny. And then, I thankfully came to acceptance. Like Popeye, "I yam what I yam". Now when I refer to my "six-pack", check the refrigerator. That's where you'll find it.