When I fall in love it will be forever
Or I’ll never fall in love
In a restless world like this is
Love is ended before it’s begun
And too many moonlight kisses
Seem to cool in the warmth of the sun
When I give my heart it will be completely
Or I’ll never give my heart
And the moment I can feel that you feel that way too
Is when I fall in love with you.
~”When I Fall in Love” by Heyman Edward and Victor Young
—
The year was 2001. It was months before the horrific events of 9/11. I was working as an office manager at a granite fabrication and installation facility in Fort Mill, SC. (Stop scratching your head and/or laughing.)
My life and my soul, or more specifically, my creative soul, was empty.
I had moved to Charlotte, NC from Pittsburgh, PA six years earlier (1995) desperate for a new or any direction in my life.
I had graduated college in 1986 with a BS in Communications. The only career path I was ever able to feebly communicate was that I wanted to do something creative and fun.
In 2001 was 37 years old. I had spent the bulk of my professional life in a cubicle wearing a headset in a series of call centers. Those who have ever met me understand how cruel that was to my ADD/ADHD hyperkinetic personality. Hundreds of thousands of calls in which I said and did the same thing over and over and over again.
My need to please the universe by doing what I was “supposed” to do, serious up, grow up, get a “real job” and put the (self-perceived, or at least I talked myself into thinking so) silliness of my creative skills, talents and aspirations was killing me. I was too scared and insecure to be my authentic self.
It was a day at the granite facility like most of the ones that I suffered through for two years. I was bored, hopeless and depressed. My life was going nowhere, and it was going there very slowly.
That’s when the Fort Mill (SC) Times, literally, saved my life.
To my remembrance we had never before (and never after) received a physical edition of the Times at the office, but this day we did.
As I read all sections from front to back to kill time, a specific article left me transfixed.
The article recounted the life story of Keli Semelsberger who was born and raised in the area. She moved to Chicago, IL for a job. She was terrified of public speaking. She enrolled in an improvisational theatre class to overcome that fear. She then spent a decade in Chicago performing, learning about and teaching improv. She returned to her hometown when she got pregnant. Unfortunately, she could not find improv classes or improv shows upon her return. So, she decided to start her own. Now, the article mentioned, she was looking for students for next round of improv classes.
For as long as I could remember I possessed a wickedly quick, sarcastic, pop culture and jack of all subjects, but master of none sense of humor. (Thanks grandpap Pacitti, dad and cousin Mark.) Throughout the majority of the first almost four decades of my life this “skill/talent” was limited to humorous quips directed toward friends, colleagues and loved ones.
There were brief detours into college newspaper writing, performing, I was not a good memorizer, so scripted plays were a struggle, disc jockeying and movie screenplay writing. My “skill” was desperately in search of creative niche that didn’t exist or so I thought.
You see, all the multitudes of technological avenues that creative individuals take for granted today that they use to express themselves, did not exist in the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s.
This thing (of which I had never heard of before) called improv sounded fun. So, I contacted Ms. Semelsberger and signed up for her classes. I waited with bated breath for them to start.
The night of the first class I was sitting in my car outside the venue near the corner of Charlotte’s Uptown Pecan and Central Avenues caddycorner from Fuel Pizza and the Diary Queen.
I was scared sh*tless. I tried and tried to talk myself out of attending the class. However, I was saved by another “skill/talent” of mine that I have perfected over the decades, frugality. Ask anyone whose path I have ever crossed. No one pinches a penny harder than me. I chastised myself that since I had already paid for the classes that I was not going to waste that money.
As I sheepishly climbed the steps leading to second floor venue of the class (which was housed in the space occupied by the former local sketch comedy group, “The Perch,”) I was, literally, trembling.
Dorothy’s life was about to turn from black and white to technicolor.
I describe the experience that night as, figuratively, “sitting in the most comfortable seat that I had ever sat in before.”
I had found my passion, calling, tribe, voice, the square hole to my square peg or a million different variations of the same cliché.
After over two decades I think back to how miraculous it was that all the elements had to fall into place for me to find myself in that place at that time.