I wish to reveal something about myself, that you would never know, just from looking at my photo or reading my blogs. Why am I doing this? I don't know...I've gotten really weird since turning fifty. Things just come out of my mouth without much thought. Might be why my kids don't want to be out in public with me. My daughter once asked me if I was going to be the kind of old lady that dyes my hair bright red and has lipstick smeared on my face from ear to ear. It is an interesting concept. Spending the last years of my life humiliating my children as payback for the times they humiliated me. Reminds me of a time when my daughter was about three years old. She was sitting in the grocery cart, and as we headed down an aisle, I spotted a man who must have weighed over four hundred pounds, coming in our direction. I cringed, thinking of what my daughter might say. I tried to telepathically send her a message "don't call the man fat, don't call the man fat". He went by us, and my daughter remained silent. Just as I was giving a sigh of relief, she said as loudly as she could "HEY MOM, THAT MAN SURE HAD BIG PANTS!!!"
Anyway, on to the big reveal. I really had to think long and hard about my decision to enter into this industry. The reason? I am accident prone. Other people might use the term clumsy, but I think of clumsy as tripping over your own feet, which I have yet to do. What I do is almost drown, fall over cliffs, fall down stairs, walk into things, drop everything, hit my head, slip on ice, fall out of bed, step on glass, kneel on nails, and the list goes on.
This is what happened to me at one of my first staging jobs: It was a huge home, and they wanted the whole thing staged. This was my only two day job ever. Nice home, but filled to the brim with sports paraphernalia. Everywhere. You walked out of the hall bath to see a huge photo of Muhammad Ali staring at you. Side note: I'm not that impressed with sports stuff, but they did have a Miss America trophy (the owners great-aunt or something had the title one year) that was totally cool. Anyway, I was on this job more as an assistant, because I was still learning. I was "assigned" a bedroom that belonged to a young man, now away at school. The bed was just a platform on the floor, though it did have a bookcase-type headboard. Perhaps, this young man fell out of bed too. I felt an instant kinship to him. My co-stagers and I decided early on that the sports stuff had to be removed. It was just too distracting. Like telling visitors to the Baseball Hall of Fame, just to notice the architecture of the building. Hanging above the bed in this room was a full sized hockey jersey in a full sized display case.
I stood on one side of the bed, and tried to lift it up a little to determine how heavy it was. Didn't seem too bad. I stepped out in the hall for a second, debating whether to ask for help. What the heck, I decided. I'm a strong person, and at 5'7'', not too tiny either. I never ask for help if I truly believe I can do something myself. I stood on the mattress, and grasped the sides of the frame. The width of the frame was exactly the same as my arm span. I slowly lifted until I felt the display case start to come my way. OK, "start to come my way" is an understatement! This thing was heavy! I briefly thought that maybe the player was still in the jersey, and that was my last thought, as I felt myself falling backwards. Now, you may think that a person who is accident prone, is probably not a very lucky person. On the contrary! I consider myself VERY lucky! And my luck held up, because I was falling, yes, but I was on a mattress! No words came out of my mouth, as I saw myself falling in slow motion. OK, there might have been a small word or two. Now, what made me a good stager then, and still one to this day, I did not let go of that jersey. I continued to hold tight until I was completely horizontal, on my back, and pinned beneath it. Now you might think, at this point, I would be praying that someone would walk in to save me. WRONG!!! Humiliation is a greater fear of mine than dying! Well, I didn't have to worry about that. I was on my own! I'm not sure how long it took, seemed to me like hours, but I slowly rocked the display case, each time wiggling further and further to the edge of the bed, until I could finally crawl out from under it. I straightened my clothes, fixed my hair, and examined the stupid thing laying on the bed to make sure that there wasn't any damage. Just then, one of my co-stagers popped her head in. "Need help taking that thing downstairs?" Yeah, sure.
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