Cross

[Savage Dragon]

It wasn’t that big a deal to me. It would just be something cool, something I could say was mine and it would say something about who I was. I didn’t want to pay a lot for it; I just wanted it so I could wear it every now and then. I had no idea how important it was going to become to me.

 

When my grandmother passed away, I started ask real questions for the first time. I wanted to know where she was, if she was safe, if she was happy. My parents had taken me to church and put me in Sunday school when I was kid, but that’d been a long time ago. I had never paid much attention in those classes, but it seemed like a good place to start. Like any other high-schooler, I began by asking my friends. I was surprised by the answers I got from some of them. This guy named Jesus apparently had the answers. One of them asked if I wanted to come to church with him. A day later I gave my life to Christ. A year later, I became a full member of Groveton Baptist Church.

 

That’s what this was all about, it was about my faith. I’m incredibly proud of my faith. It’s one of the most important decisions I’ve ever made and it was a decision I’d made on my own. I’m proud that I love Jesus and I want people to know. So I began looking around for one.

 

I mentioned it to my mom and my mom, being the shopping master that she is, looked for one too. She came back with all sorts of options that she’d bought for me. Some were very pointy and some were dull; some had chains and some had beads; some fit tightly and some were loose. They were all very ordinate, but none of them “fit”. I thanked my mom and told her she could take them back. They were all very unique and that, peculiarly enough, was what bothered me.

 

In high school, everyone tries to be different. No one tries to fit into the crowd anymore, they try to stand out. Everyone has conformed to the idea of non-conformity. (Yes, I know that’s very confusing, my friends and I have stayed up late many nights trying to understand it all). I was no different; I wanted to be different as well. I went through many different styles. I had a period where I liked to wear shirts with funny sayings, but I stopped because I kept seeing other people wearing the same shirt. For a while I wore my leather jacket everyday, and then a friend started wearing the leather jacket his dad had sent him from Russia so I stopped. Sometimes when I tried new styles, I found they had already been claimed by someone else. Wearing dinner jackets with jeans was Will’s. Wearing ties was Mike’s. Wearing long sleeves under a t-shirt was Andrew’s. Even popped collars had been claimed by Austin. For so long I had been lost in my attempts to be individual.

 

But I didn’t have that problem when I was at church or talking with my Christian friends. No one cared who was the most unique, there was no pressure to think of something new and different. I could just be me, even if “me” wore plain clothes and didn’t stand out in a crowd. I began to try less to be different and began to just wear the simplest clothing. I was surprised when after a while I realized that I had indeed succeeded in becoming different. Out of all the kids in my high school, I was one of the few that were ok being the same. So when my mom showed me all those different ones, they just didn’t appeal to me because they were trying to hard to be different, I wanted one that just was.

 

For Christmas my family has always had the tradition of opening one present on Christmas Eve, and after a while the kids in my family noticed that they had a habit of always being pajamas, which we would wear that night and into the next morning while we opened presents. That Christmas Eve started the same way; I got a new pair of pajamas with Snoopy on them, which I put on. But when my three sisters and I had changed into our pjs, my mother announced she had another set of gifts to hand out that year and out came four of the smallest boxes. Surprised my sisters and I opened them, for my sisters they revealed three pairs of beautiful earrings, for me it revealed a silver cross on a silver chain. It was exactly what I wanted. I thanked my mother for the perfect gift. But she told us the gift wasn’t from her.

 

It was the last gift from my grandmother.

[Savage Dragon]

Part II

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"R U Serious?" is a title hard to take seriously, but it's a show that has had a serious effect on my life. It was put on by my church about two years ago, a simple show with a simple message. It was directed by my Sunday school teacher and performed by our class. I probably don't have to tell you that its message was about Jesus. Some of my best friends were in that show and it's remained in my mind as one of the best shows I ever did.

 

I've been doing theater for about as long as I can remember, courtesy of my mother's influences. I've been the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland, Mecrucio in Romeo and Juliet, and Huck Finn in Tom Sawyer. I've been a pirate, a penguin's agent, and a prince. I've been a member of the KKK, a catcher for the Washington Senators baseball team, and a raccoon. I've acted, sung, "tech"-ed, and directed. I've seen my share of shows. I've been a part of well run shows that ended badly, poorly run shows that pulled it off in the end, and shows that I'm ashamed to have been a part of. But there have been countless shows that I will always treasure. "R U Serious?" is at the top.

 

I've been the lead in numerous plays, in "R U Serious?" I was a chorus member. I've had a solo in numerous musicals, in "R U Serious?" I sang with everybody else. I did have a few small parts that I could call my own, but nothing big. For the most part I just got to be a part of it. And I wasn't alone, my best friend Andrew was part of the show and his current girlfriend Sarah Preston, so were two of my friends Jessica Darcy and Whitney Zangarine, even my little sister, Nichole came to some of the rehearsals though she wasn't able to be in the show. We all had small parts that we each got to have fun with, but most of the time we were able to just hang out.

 

We had rehearsal only once a week and they were usually pretty short. We sang the songs and only received basic blocking because we didn't have access to our stage yet. We joked with each other and escaped from a lot of our other worries of the time. But what we we're all looking forward to was the Lock In, the day where all the cast slept over at the church and we worked on the show. We rehearsed, ate dinner and breakfast the next day together, and watched tapes of the churches old shows. Mostly, though, it was just an excuse to stay up all night and one that we celebrate.

 

The Lock In was a lot of fun. Some people stayed up all night, but I didn't make it. The show was the next weekend. We weren't entirely ready, but we felt completely ready. The show was old, corny, and was only funny when you made fun of it, but we loved it. When the show started, we walked in from the audience, singing our hearts out about Jesus. The show went on through a football game, a mall food court, and the home and we had fun cheering for imaginary teams, throwing food at each other, and singing lame songs with important meanings at the top of our lungs. When the show was over, we were all close to crying. That same day my friend Jessica and my sister Nichole became Christians. It was the most fun show I've ever done. It was the most important show I've ever done.

Edited May 16, 2006 by Savage Dragon