My Sense of Humor

If I had to choose one word to describe myself, I would have to choose gravity-deprived,
or clumsy. Ever since I can remember, I have been running into things, falling when absolutely
nothing is there to trip me, numerous broken bones, chipped teeth, you name it - I’ve done it.
My first memory of the family curse of clumsiness has to be when I was in
kindergarten, attending Cathedral Grade School. It was the last day of school in 1980, a typically
stifling hot early June morning - and this was before air conditioning was heard of in Catholic
schools. Seriously, we as Catholics are made to suffer "To remember what Jesus went through".
Or maybe it was to conserve energy. Who knows?
Since it was the last day of school, we were permitted to go without our school uniforms.
If you ever attended a private school, you know that this was the best thing next to Christmas!
My grandmother at the time thought it was an ingenious idea to dress me and my sister and I up
as if we were going to mass. So here we are, complete in our pigtails, shiny Mary Jane shoes,
brand new peach-colored linen dresses that were homemade. Homemade dresses of course were
a must-have as we were growing up. They always matched, and I believe this is one of the main
reasons my sister and I fought like cats and dogs. When you are eighteen months apart, you
barely want to speak to your sibling, much less be dressed like the Bobsey twins
After suffering in the classroom for 4 hours, my long dark hair, which was slicked back
into double pigtails at 7:00 A.M. Now my head resembled that of someone who stuck her finger
into an electrical socket. My sister and I were now ready for our hike up Fifth Street to visit my
grandmother who had come into town the day before from Evergreen, Colorado.

I was doing my best to keep up with my older sister, which is hard enough in my usual
sneakers that I would wear to school, but this was excruciating in the stiff maroon-colored Mary
Jane’s. Which I often called my "booze shoes", because my mother told me that they were wine-
colored. My routine was to look down at my feet to make sure that they were following what my
brain told them to do. Sometimes they had a mind of their own.
I was paying extra-special attention to the cracks of the sidewalk, for it was nearly a
mortal sin at that time to step on one of them. The next thing that I remember, my sister is yelling
"Watch out, Kim!" and I am face-first in warm, fresh cement.
I look up, horribly embarrassed, to see Katie’s face pink with delight. She screams at the
top of her lungs, "Hurry up! You’re going to freeze into the cement!" Nothing could have
frightened a six year-old more. I try and get up and my legs felt so heavy, that I fell back into the
cement, which sent my sister into a fit of hysterical laughter. She grabbed me by the back of my
dress and pulled me onto my feet. She informed me that I had to keep moving before I froze
before we got home, which was another four blocks away.
By the time we got home, the stuff was feeling like cardboard all over my body, and I
was crying so hard that I had streaks down my cheeks that had penetrated through the cement. As
I was plunged into the bath water within two seconds of entering the house, this was my first real
lesson of taking myself lightly. Obviously I had flunked that test.
Four years after the "Cement incident", I discovered my great passion in life. Performing.
At the age of ten, I stepped onto the boards of Springfield Theatre Centre in a production of
"Pinocchio".
For me, performing has been a very humbling experience. As human beings, I believe

that we all start out our childhood as very self-centered people, and usually something that we
perceive to be traumatic happens in our lives, and thus begins our transformation of grounded
adults, or taking ourselves lightly. Performing has taught me a great lesson. To laugh at yourself
before anyone else has a chance to do so.
When I first began acting, I thought this was a way to put my clumsiness behind me. I
mean, if we are able to portray completely different personalities, we should be able to
incorporate that into our body movement. Boy, was I wrong.
After eight years of playing different small character roles in Community theater
productions, my big break came in Southeast High School’s production of "L’il Abner" in 1994.
After preparing for this audition for several months, I was confident that I would feel great about
my audition for the role of Mammy Yokum.
I hit a little snag, though. I was famous, or rather, infamous, in Springfield for being a
"repeat offender" - that is beating a song to death in every audition throughout town. This
particular year was no exception. The song was "Love Changes Everything" from the musical
Aspects of Love by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Why this was a snag is this was not a romantic lead.
Mammy Yokum is the comic relief. As soon as I got out two bars of the song, the director
informed me that he would like for me to do an up-tempo song. Ah, the joys of bad decisions! So
he chose for me "All That Jazz" from Chicago, and I nailed it, and the role of Mammy Yokum.
The performances went off without a hitch, with the exception of the last matinee. I was
parading around in my final scene in a pink taffeta dress, which happened to have a gigantic bow
on the back that went all the way to my feet. Yes, you guessed it! I tripped, fell, and landed on
my knees. At first, I was speechless. Not a thought popped into my head. Then I played it off as
if I was having a temper tantrum. I pounded my fists on the floor, and my friend, Micah, who
was playing my husband, helped me up.
What this has led me to is my sense of humor. I have learned that laughing at one’s self
before anyone else has the chance to do so is probably my way of relief. It helps mask my
insecurities and embarrassment of my lack of coordination.
I believe that if I didn’t have this sense of humor about myself, that I would absolutely go
insane. Whether it is when I hit a wrong note, forget a line, or fall on stage, you had better
believe that I will be the first one to talk about it with a huge smile on my face!