How much of our time is spent reminiscing? Were they really the good old days, or do we only remember the good parts of the old days, and the rest of them sucked just as bad as today’s days do, and a couple years down the road we’ll look back on something that happened this week as one of the good old days?
I don’t know what happened to trigger this memory, but it was funny then, and it brings a chuckle to me every time I think about it.
I was a Thespian in high school, a “drama jock,” if you will. I lived and breathed tech theatre for all four years. Our high school auditorium had quite a sophisticated stage, so much so that several professional productions were staged there each year. The benefit to being so involved with the mechanics of our stage was that, when these professional productions came in, they had to hire local hands to work the stage. The school didn’t trust just anybody, so we students were handed roughly 25 to 35 minimum-wage hours for the week to help set-up, rehearse, and tech the performances.
My best friend since 4th grade is Lu. His full first name is Lucio. My family always had the hardest time pronouncing his name. “LOO-she-o” was the most common mispronunciation. Also common was “LOO-che-o,” or “loo-CHEE-o,” which was understandable, coming from a family used to Italian pronunciations. But Lucio is Mexican. I struggled to correct people on the proper pronunciation, but Lucio and his mild speech impediment didn’t help…when he said it, it sounded more like “LOO-she-o” than anything else.
It took more than 10 years, a stint in the military, and living in a college dorm for someone to come up with a convenient solution and just start calling him “Lu.”
But I digress. Lu and I were hired by one of the professional shows in town. I was up in the rear of the auditorium, in the follow-spot booth, and Lu was operating the lighting board backstage. The stage manager with the production was talking to all of us on headsets and running through our cues as we neared the start of the show. It wasn’t that he was mispronouncing Lu’s name like so many other people did. He had misheard it all together.
“Lucien?”
“Yeah?” Nobody on the stage crew had the balls to tell the guy he was saying the wrong name, but we all knew who he was talking to.
“At the opening curtain, lights up full,” said the stage manager.
“Okay,” said Lucio.
“After the second song, we’ll fade to a blue wash.”
“Okay.”
“The fourth song starts with just the follow-spot, but then we’ll fade up on my cue with an orange cyc.”
“Okay.”
“The fifth song is a medley.”
“Okay.”
“The first part is lights up full…”
“Okay.”
“Then the tempo changes at the second part and we go to a red wash and cyc…”
“Okay.”
“Uh…Lucien?” said the stage manager.
“Yeah?”
“You don’t have to say, ‘Okay,’ after everything I say.”
There was a pause of a few seconds.
“All right.”
Everyone on headsets giggled through the rest of the evening, and Lu and I still laugh about it today.
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