"NO!" I yelped. "Stop! No! Absolutely not, no! You're not--you're not really--NO!"

And Nutz Brotha #2 continued to pee into a bottle.

Seriously. At this point I appeal to parents, to youth caseworkers, to juvenile delinquents everywhere. What do you do? You can't slam on the brakes, for fear of everyone being baptized with aqueous effluvia. There is absolutely no answer for "Public Urination, Moving Vehicle, Adolescent Perpetration Thereof," anywhere. If there is, I WANT IT. Please. Not even want.

NEED.

The Nutz Brothas and I drove to Nevada this weekend to take in a play directed by Mama T.
They are all directed by Mama T; notwithstanding the fact that she's the only game in town, she's a damn fine good one.

Some years are better than others. Coaches understand this; although we approach things from different ends of the spectrum, I can't imagine that sport coaches feel any differently. Some years are "growing" years. Those are the years that you train kids, you search desperately for that wheat that makes all the chaff worthwhile, and you inevitably have to give way to the fact that the high school football team needs the auditorium for its pre-game assembly. And then...it's like alchemy. Out of nowhere, one of the kids has real talent. They are relatively normal, and they bring their friends to the fray. Suddenly you have half-a-dozen with Real Talent, and you're not sure where to put them all. You pray to Dionysus, hoping all the time that a Greek god is going to understand the plight of the modern-day drama teacher (Rick Riordian notwithstanding), and you cast your show. Grade check, sports seasons, and residual trauma ensue. And at the end you're left standing, wild-eyed, five-nights-of-sleep deprived, and giddy because "THEY EFFING GOT THAT LAST CUE RIGHT!!!!!! YOU CAN'T! BEAT! THAT!!!!!"

I spend my whole life wishing to be even an eighth of the drama coach that Mama T is.

This time she let me be a part of cast notes.

"The crowd scene as you're all coming in to the camp," I said, and was horrified to feel the tears not just pricking but threatening to erode what little was left of my eyeliner. "The Nazi guard that picks up the little boy and hauls him away as he's screaming for his family...I mean this in the nicest possible way, but you're a bastard!"

The girl I know is both sweet, kind, and gentle. She loves theater--she, as near as I can tell, is a total Drama Geek--and her mission in this current production is to be as unlikeable and realistic as she can be. I respect her. I envy her to a certain level; as an adult you can't produce that kind of trauma and terror when technically you can be classified as a Little Person. (We as Little People tend to get head pats and the ever-so-sweet nod that lets us know that we are set, as long as we want Victorian dolls and verbena-smelling underpinnings.) And yet never, even once, did I get the sense that she was anything other than totally committed to where she was, when she was, and everything that it meant.

I don't know; maybe it means more when you see someone behaving totally differently than you know them to be. Maybe it imbues you with a completely different sense of reality, one which allows them to be Total Bastards and yet still be some of the most charming, sweet, kind, and considerate people you'll ever meet.

Great show, White Pine! You can't. BEAT. THAT!!!!!!