Growing Up Bates: Multiple Personality Disorder - Christmas Play Style

I admit it; it was fun to grow up in a small town. You get to do things that kids who grow up in big cities do not get to do like go Cow Tipping [ahem, not that I ever did that....] or play mail box baseball [which is SURELY never did....right....].

The thing about small towns in the South is that they are full of small churches. Our church was no exception. We had a membership of 32 people, and at one point I WAS the youth group. I was the only one. But at the same time there was a slew of kids under the age of tweleve there.

Every church must put on a Christmas program. I believe it is in the Constitution as a mandate, but I could be wrong. Our church was no exception to this rule. The year when I WAS the youth group, the Christmas programs that was picked were always waaaaayyyy too ambitious for our little group of kids to complete. There were big words in the dialoug, musical numbers, huge props, and actual direction that had to be followed to deliever the lines correctly.

Can you guess what happened next? As we were going through assigning parts my name kept getting written down next to several characters and all musical numbers. It basically became a one person play, simply because I was the only one who could read the big words at that time. Even when the song was supposed to be sung by another character, it was me singing off stage while the other character was on stage. I was talking to myself as different characters, getting outfits mixed up and straight up Milli Vanilli'ing my way through the play. It was lots of fun.

All experiences teach you life skills. What did I learn from the Christmas Play experience? I gained the ability to multi-task, and I learned that it is really alright to talk to yourself. Sometimes, it's even expected.