A Good Learning Experience

My life has consisted of pretty much average experiences, punctuated with a few moments of spiritually inspired greatness where I knew that I had accomplished something far and above those around me. I’m not talking about the winning the Boston Marathon or finding a cure for Cancer here, just day to day stuff that I took a particular interest in.

Maybe I have selective memory, but it seems that every single time I have “raised the bar” and really excelled at something and selfishly looked forward to a nice pat on the back and some ego-stroking, I have ended up with a boot on my ass and a feeling of guilt for making others feel bad as a result of my own efforts. For instance…

When I was in the fifth grade, our class had a “dream house” competition. The contest in theory, involved the students designing and building a scale model of their own “dream house.”

I was excited about the contest. You see, since a very early age my dad and I had built model airplanes together. Flying model airplanes. By the time I was in the fifth grade I could take sheets and strips of balsa wood and glue together a tissue covered structure that would actually fly—without using a prefabricated kit. A house was going to be a no- brainer.

Instead of balsa wood (which was expensive) my dad suggested that we select and modify a floor plan I liked from a “Homes magazine” and build the walls of the house out of plain office file folders. The folder stock was rigid enough yet could be folded and painted and was cheep. And so we did.

Under his supervision I carefully drew the floor plan on one sheet of stock and each of the interior and exterior walls on stock with little “tabs” on each end that would allow them to be glued together. The whole process took four or five evenings, but the finished product was painted inside and out with different finishes and looked great. It even had little cardboard kitchen cabinets, interior colored felt carpeting, a contact paper kitchen floor and drive way, and a green felt lawn outside. The roof of the house was removable so that you could see the front porch, carport, and the interior rooms. I was really proud of my work.

The problems started when my mother and I delivered my “dream home” to the school library where all the homes were to be displayed. “A fifth grader couldn’t have built something that looked like that,” some teachers said. “He had too much help…blaa blaa blaa…” You see, the other kids had basically taken cardboard boxes and cut out doors and windows and colored bricks and shutters on the outside of their boxes. A few had interior partitions made of cardboard or construction paper, but nothing else built apparently at the last minute came close to what I had built in five evenings with my model building skills.

The contest quickly was converted to a display rather than a competition and the whole thing sorta just died away without any prizes or recognition. Oh well, it was a good learning experience…

Fast forward to the eighth grade and the science teacher announced a science fair. I was all over the opportunity. I again was interested in using my model building skills and interest in aviation to compete. I built a working, flying model hovercraft with two gas powered engines, of my own design, from scratch, and fly it did—about an inch off of the ground. I brought it to school with great pride to find that I was competing with the ordinary assortment of poster board displays of mundane “science fair” projects and vinegar and baking soda volcanoes, etc.

I flew my hovercraft in the parking lot in front of the gym. For some reason, the science fair was converted at the last minute into a “display” rather than a “competition.” Again people complained that I had built my hovercraft from a kit or that I had too much parental help. I even received a grade of “B” rather than an “A” over some technicality in my written paper. Oh well…a good learning experience.

In tenth grade we had the standard “term paper” assignment in English class. You know-- the dreaded stack of index cards and lists of “ibid” on the back of the minimum 2000 words? Again I figured if I was going to have to write a research paper, I should use my time researching something I was interested in. How about Hovercraft?

Having actually previously built a flying Hovercraft, it seemed to make sense to me. And so I did. Working for several weeks, I wrote a beautifully researched paper that also included my own knowledge gained previously and I did a nice color drawing for a cover sheet (for ten points extra credit.) I brought it in to school and turned it in to the teacher on the appointed day.

The paper came back graded “F.” “I was obviously guilty of plagiarism” said my teacher, “because every darn paragraph I had written didn’t have a reference.” How dare I actually produce original work in the process of developing a high school term paper?

My mom had to make an embarrassing (for me) visit to the school and bring my flying hovercraft in order to prove that I had original, personal knowledge of what I had written about. After much discussion and the involvement of the principal, I had my paper re-graded as a B+ and on my cover drawing my bitch of a teacher wrote “It wouldn’t be very pretty, would it…”

All in all a good learning experience…

As an adult I’m still subjecting myself to “good learning experiences.” The past ten months I’ve been involved with the local community theater company, first as an actor, and in the past four productions in various levels of responsibility in stage management and set construction.

I gave up trying to act because I’m not an experienced actor and I found the rehearsal schedule to be difficult to accommodate—particularly with the liberties many actors felt they could take in not attending. It’s hard to learn to act with someone reading the lines of a missing actor from the seating area. Somehow they seem to get the show together at the last minute, but I can’t stand the stress.

For the past two months I’ve been working as the Set Designer and Set Construction Chief for Agatha Christies play “The Mousetrap.” I have worked my ass off, putting in nearly two hundred and fifty hours, much of the time working by myself. I have also been able to produce, like my fifth grade dream home, a set that is several orders of magnitude above what has ever been produced here before. There have been a few hiccups in the schedule and the Christmas/New Years holidays prevented me from getting much assistance over the past two weeks. I also had a confrontation with the Director and producer last week when they cancelled our technical rehearsal (a rehearsal where the lighting, sound, and set building guys are supposed to get to see how everything works together) at the last minute last week, but I finished my planned work about 4:30 Thursday afternoon, just in time for the 8:00PM preview performance that evening and the opening show Friday night. I was dead tired, relieved to be finished, and excited to see my name in print in the program and for the public to see the results of my efforts.

Just like the earlier experiences that I just recounted, at 4:31 PM the shit hit the fan. The two thousand copies of the freshly printed programs arrived at the theater and guess what; there was no mention of my involvement as Set Designer and Set Construction Chief. They forgot…

What’s the big deal, you might ask? Well, in the theater business, being the set designer is a big deal, and getting mentioned in the program as such is basically the only recognition that you get, since the director and producer’s name are plastered all over the marquee and the cover of the program.

To make matters worse, when I pointed out that I wasn’t’ mentioned in the program, it set off a firestorm of arguments and infighting and blame placing and all of my hard work is now overshadowed by the ensuing political crappola. To add insult to injury, now the producer (who is guilty of being pretty much invisible to date during this production) IS MAD AT ME because the theater board made her print an “insert” listing my name and position to put in the program. I'm afraid that the insert, while accomplishing the task of identifying my involvment, makes me end up looking like an egotistical moron for complaining in the first place.

I just want to crawl under a rock somewhere. Is it just me, or does this kind of stuff happen to everybody?

Oh well, all in all, it’s been a good learning experience....