Ted's+Memoir

A Difficult Stage By Mr. DeVirgilis I looked out at the audience from the elementary school stage and saw a sea of confusion. They weren’t laughing as I had hoped. They weren’t even smiling politely. My desperate attempt to become accepted in my new school as a cool, intelligent, and funny kid failed miserably. What was I thinking performing ballet at the fifth grade school talent show?

When I moved from woodsy Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania, to trendy, suburban Philadelphia, I realized I had to change if I was to survive socially. I arrived during Christmas break in the middle of fifth grade and was immediately met with a class full of kids who had brand name clothes. I had heard of Air Jordan sneakers but not actually seen them until that first day. Every other boy seemed to have these amazing black and red Air Jordan sneakers, and every girl looked trendy. The first kid that came up to me, Sean, was wearing a skinny black leather tie, very cool at the time. A hip tie in fifth grade! Where am I? Who in the world would want to befriend a country bumpkin like me, hand-me-down jeans and all?

A large part of me wanted to move back to the little yellow house on the hill our family named DeVirgilis Mountain. Could it really be as perfect as I remember it? Playing war in the surrounding woods, family walks hand-in-hand though a snowy wonderland – illuminated only by the sparse streetlights and the snow’s magical reflection, never worrying about what I looked or sounded like? To this day, it still seems like Eden.

In suburban Philadelphia, I would need to change – or suffer a long psychological demise. Kids in my new school mostly thought I was strange, even after I talked my mom into buying some of the clothes that kids were wearing. I even got Jordans. Not black and red //Air// Jordan sneakers but white //Sky// Jordans. I was a half-size too small for the cooler Air Jordans. The kids weren’t impressed with these new attempts to fit in.

I thought I was making progress towards being friends with two athletic kids, Kevin Ericson and Jimmy Williams. One day at recess, Jimmy, a muscular black kid who always seemed like he was about to laugh, walked up to me and chuckled, "Hey, Teddy, niiiice shoes, my man. Let me get a better look at them."

I couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not, but I was happy someone cared enough to ask. "Well. they're actually Sky Jordans not-"

As I started to to display the sneaker's label, he shoved me violently in the chest. For a split second, I felt confusion and fear. As I tried to steady myself from the push by adjusting my feet, I felt something behind my knees. Someone was crouching behind my legs, and I still remember the helpless feeling of falling clumsily backwards, arms flailing, and hitting my head on the hard clay earth. From the ground I looked over to see Kevin and Jimmy, walking away laughing.

It’s hard being the new kid.

I could have easily retreated into becoming a frightened shell of a child, awaiting my next humiliation. Instead, following the awful feeling of the shoving incident, I vowed that by my senior year in high school, I would be THE MOST POPULAR KID IN THE SCHOOL. Notice how I didn’t vow to be a well-adjusted, mature kid, happy to be himself. I was – and am – someone who goes to extremes. Going from a kid who is teased to the top of the social ladder sounded achievable to me. To reach this lofty goal, I would have to get started immediately. At the next school assembly, the principal handed me the golden opportunity I was looking for.

“We will be having a fourth and fifth-grade talent show in three weeks, and we’d like to invite anyone with talent in singing, dancing, playing instruments, magic… anything, to enter.”

I played no instruments and had no talent singing at the time-I am many, many years from singing in faculty bands at this point- but I had to find some way to get on that stage. Of course, //now// I don’t recall the exact thought process that led to my eventual idea – because it doesn’t make much sense to me now as an adult – but I decided that I would make my first step towards supreme popularity by doing ballet. Yes, ballet. In fifth grade. To make friends.

It made sense to me then: everyone would be playing simple tunes on their piano, doing stupid card tricks in their polyester black tuxedo and top hat, and then I would go out to real dramatic music and, with a friend or two, ballet it up. The audience would totally dig it! (I think my love of irony – giving an audience the opposite of what they expect - began at that moment.)

I recruited the only two people less cool than me in my school, Suken Shaw and Jason Marmute, for the ballet performance. They must have seen something in my eyes as I explained my idea, or maybe they were just desperate to do something with a friend, but I got them to agree. Suken was the only Indian boy in my school and, because in Pennsylvania just about everyone was lily-white and closed minded, he was generally ignored.

Jason Marmute, on the other hand, would probably always be an outcast. He was a big kid, large gummed, bucked teeth, and ran so awkwardly that it was painful, or painfully funny, to watch him run. With his arms, head, and gums flopping, he unfortunately resembled the dog that was in the Sunday cartoons at the time, Marmaduke. And I was going to have Marmaduke do ballet.

We rehearsed over Suken’s, and I still can smell the mysterious Indian spices that perfumed the house. Suken’s mom was kind enough to watch us and supply us with classical music, which was a detail I somehow did not think of. The plan was for us all to be dancing at different speeds: one of us fast, one slow, and one medium speed. This was to be funny, sure, but also to distract from the fact that none of us knew how to do ballet and had never, in fact, seen much of it. It was fun to rehearse and calm my partners’ nerves, as they somehow doubted that this would make us cool. I convinced them and we worked right up to the show date.

I don’t remember much of the talent show except that it took place during the school day and, early in the show, Tom Sheponik, a nice kid in my class, asked //me// to turn the pages of his music book as he played the piano. I was flattered he asked me – the new kid – to help, and I wondered if doing ballet was necessary to make friends after all.

But it was too late.

The curtain parted and Jason, Suken, and I waited for our musical cue. Marmaduke was the first out, slowly prancing across the stage. I heard a few chuckles from the audience. Suken shot out and spun his best pirouettes. The two went back and forth across the stage: one fast, one slow. Then I came out. Since I was the regular speed dancer, I had the hardest job to make the audience laugh, so I danced seriously. //Really// seriously. I wore a stern look as I tiptoed; then with hands above my head, I would spin around. We danced like few fifth grade boys trying to be popular had ever danced before.

The music stopped and I waited for uproarious applause. Of course, it didn’t come. I tried to laugh the bad reaction off as I walked off the stage to show the audience that it was all for fun. Neither laughs nor smiles came. I felt like a massive failure. I would be a loser forever.

The school year ended and I was still not exactly cool, but I had made some friends, and not just Suken and Jason. I now had a reputation for doing kooky things. I even heard that the cutest girl, Maggie Lentz, thought I was funny. I could deal with this. The die was set: I knew that doing funny, ironic things was the way I would be accepted. In sixth grade, I gave a funny speech for homeroom representative and received every vote except for one. And I voted for my opponent. Throughout schooling, I did all the comedic roles in the plays. In high school, I was famous for the class president speeches I gave impersonating George Bush Sr. It’s hard to tell whether I was THE MOST POPULAR kid in the school, but my peers voted me “Most Likely to be President of the United States.” Not bad for a former ballerino from the Poconos.

But what does being popular mean in the end? After all these years, there is no one from high school that I still talk to. Did I //need// to make a fool of myself in fifth grade to make friends? Probably not, but that was the beginning of a big part of what makes me, me.

For better or worse, my need to be liked as a new kid led me down some strange paths, and though I still fail as much as I succeed in my performances – be it as a karaoke star, rock singer, or as a teacher – I still love being up on stage trying to make people laugh. It’s fun. Luckily, I don’t have to do it to make friends anymore.