My mother had a minor/major heart attack and . . . duh, duh, duh bought me a cell phone so I could be in constant contact. One of my few claims to fame in my family is owning a cell phone at thirteen—usually my parents start getting their children cell-phones around the time their children start driving. Although I did have to deal with the awkward "brick" cell phone my family got for me. Now days you can hardly get a phone that isn't a smart phone, I suppose the "brick" of now would be a flip phone. The brick of my time as a thirteen-year-old was a small grey square that I immediately recognized was uncool. I went through stages of thinking I was cool because I had a phone and realizing I was lame because my phone was not an icon of modernity.
Because I was young and obsessive and because my mother was my mother we bought every single item on my itinerary for the tour—which is weird, do not do this. We also labeled every single thing we bought with my name (as we were instructed to do, and which probably no one else on the entire tour did). Every shirt, every pair of pants, my shoes, probably my underwear was labeled with my first and last name in permanent marker. We were extreme in our preparation.
Personal Weirdness:
My dad is lactose intolerant, and my mother is into being supportive as a family. Hence, during the time of the tour preparations my family was going through a random phase of healthiness called "lets all be lactose free together." Since I was going on tour my mother wanted to enable me to continue subsisting without milk—which could obviously not be accomplished by simply telling people I didn't drink milk. We loaded (literally—probably with at least twenty or thirty pounds of liquid healthiness) my suitcase full of small 8oz packets of rice dream (a milk substitute that I have come to hate—quite possibly due to this experience).
I was awkward enough to begin with, young, thin, didn't wear makeup, and extremely quite around everyone but the two people I actually knew in the choir. The rice dream just added to the strangeness that was me. I was just to the point in my life where I realized things my family did were weird, but didn't actually speak up about it, I just tried to hide my shame in silence. Meaning: I took the thirty pounds of rice dream, but never ever, ever, ever pulled it out of the suitcase. I remember horrifying nights lugging my stupid black suitcase of slush up stairways while my friends watched me, asking innocent questions like, "what's in your suitcase Laura? It looks heavy."
The Busses:
Our tour groups bussed everywhere we went, we would pile our two-hundred teenagers into three or four buses in the mornings and drive All Day. Sitting in a bus all day is hard, even for patient, non-busybodies (which we weren't). But we didn't truly realize how much the buses sucked until we'd been on them for five or six hours without a break. Even conservative drinkers of water begin to feel the need for a pit-stop at this point. You would think, seeing as the buses we traveled in had bathrooms, we could have found a solution, but the bus company was stingy. Perhaps our all-time low was the time one boy had to go pee in a plastic bottle in the bathroom next to the toilet he wasn't allowed to use.
Needless to say, people stopped drinking water . . . which means they got dehydrated . . . which means they started getting heat stroke . . . and on and on in a vicious cycle. To solve this problem the choir director decided to have a water drinking competition with all of us. Whoever drank the most water won—yay. ? ! ? . . . The ridiculous part was that people bought into this idea and started drinking inordinate amounts of water. Which created problems—actually just reestablished the original problem. I was not so stupid, I continued drinking my conservative amounts of water and lived.
If I realized the stupidness of our situation at thirteen, I still continue to be baffled that so many older and wiser adults never realized it.
Near Death Experience:
Not only were the buses we traveled on stingy. . . that was only the beginning. Out of our four buses we had rented, we only regularly had three at any one time. The engine broke on a bus, then the heating broke down, then the engine again. I don't think people could have survived as much surgery as we put those poor buses through. We became extremely adapt at stuffing extra people onto our buses. Probably against federal safety regulations we frequently had enough people to fill four buses, stuffed crankily into only three.
The only time we were ever in true danger was the time the choir drove all night. We had a long stretch of road in front of us, lots of tired and miserable teenagers, and a concert the next day. Some people can sleep in uncomfortable places like planes or boats, or bus chairs—I am one such person, so be jealous.
I hunkered down in my chair next to the window, put a pillow to my ear, and slept relatively well. I may have woken up once in the night. —While I was dreaming blissfully, the driver, it would seem, also began dreaming. Our bus went off the road and into a field because our driver fell asleep at the wheel.
Was I at all concerned about this occurrence? Not at all. The first time I even knew anything had happened was the next day when my concerned cousin came and found me to ask me if I was alright. My answer was a confused look. So then he related to me the story of my bus going off the road and the driver falling asleep.
Was I concerned to get onto the bus again the next day? Again, not at all. I was perhaps not the brightest thirteen-year-old in the troupe. And yes, that is the extensive boringness of my near-death experience.
Embarrassing Story:
On the topic of long bus rides.
In order to save money we would have families in each state that would host us at their houses for a day or two while we were visiting. We would perform a concert at night for our hosts, and then they would come and collect us in small groups of three or four afterwards.
One particular night we arrived at our destination late at night, it was dark outside, we'd been on the bus all day, and we were TIRED. But the concert must go on! So we gathered together at a local church, found our seats, and waited while the chapel filled with families.
Being one of the youngest members of the choir, I was also one of the shortest. Most of the choir was seated behind the pulpit bulwark, but we set up one row of chairs in front of the bulwark—and this was the seating I was placed in.
Things started out alright. People took deep breathes, rubbed tired eyes, and we sang our first few songs. The true problem did not arise until our ensemble of older choir members grouped up next to the pulpit to sing a song . . . a lullaby. I feel like this was not an entirely intelligent move on the part of the choir director. I'd been doing really well, in fact I hadn't even realized how tired I was. By the time I'd listened to the first verse of the song my eyelids were becoming increasingly heavy, by the beginning of the second verse my head was starting to bob. I valiantly tried to counteract the head bobbing by straightening up and taking a deep breath every time I started to nod off—which became more and more frequently as the song continued.
Despite my best attempts by the end of the song I had successfully fallen asleep and jerked awake entirely too many times. To my relief after the ensemble finished and dispersed to their seats again our choir director turned and addressed the crowd with a speech that went something like this: "We've been on a very long bus ride today and a lot of us are really tired . . ." I felt better about myself after hearing this. At least I wasn't the only one who had been falling asleep.
Actually . . . the next day the choir director made the effort to come and find me.
Director: Laura.
Me: Um, yes?
Director: I just wanted to tell you that you are the most interesting person to watch fall asleep.
Me:
Director: I was watching you last night. I've never seen anyone else fall asleep like you do. You'd close your eyes and start leaning one way, then you'd jerk awake, straighten up and start leaning the other way.
Me:
Thus ends the first installment of my teenage tour weirdness. If I think of any other strange stories I think the world should be privy to I will probably write them down—I'll probably even write them down if they are not world-note-worthy.
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