Awards, Awkwardness, ADHD

As awards season is upon us, I thought I'd share my equivalent to winning an Oscar.


Since birth, the only thing i've ever truly wanted has been to win an Academy Award before I die.

My earliest memory was of me climbing up a step ladder onto the bathroom counter and sitting on the basin, delivering my acceptance speech into a tube of toothpaste, in the mirror.

I would perform for my parents, who did their obligatory clapping when I was finished doing whatever it was that I did for them.

I spent an ungodly amount of time playing, dreaming and fantasizing, it's always where I've felt most comfortable.

As I got older, I'd exhibit those desires in other ways...through acting, drawing and writing.

I was in a few shows in elementary school.  I believe I was girl #7 in The Fiddler on the Roof.

In high school the English teacher was, unfortunately, also the Drama teacher.   She was a horrible, unhappy woman who had no interest in Drama and only took the job for the extra pay.    However, even she couldn't lesson my enjoyment whenever I was on stage delivering a line that inspired a clap, laugh or gasp from the audience.  My favorite memory there was doing a scene from Carol Burnett with a boy in my class.  Even though I forgot a line,  you'd never know.  I kept going and the audience laughed and I ate it up.

After high school I wanted to go to college, however my grades were horrid and I had no money.  I went to my father and begged him to send me to school.  He reluctantly, eventually agreed and chose a school in Boston.   When I received the application, after filling out all the information I could, I needed my father to fill out any financial information and so I presented him with the application.   He blatantly said that there was no way he was going to pay for me to go to college to be a theater major.  I would have to take journalism or communications.  Well, this won't come as a surprise to anyone who knows me, but for the rest of you, I am very black and white.  My gray areas aren't very prevalent.  Its this or that, few maybes.  I will cut off my nose to spite my face... I have trouble seeing the trees through the forest, etc. etc. etc.    To sum up... I react without thinking a lot of the time, and even after the short time I realize what i've said or done, when I try to correct the wrong or mend the hurt, etc.  the damage is done.   In this case, I told him to 'fuck off'  no one tells me what I can or can't do... and, well...  I never went to school in Boston.

I wound up getting a job (many jobs) here and while working, I enrolled in every college, university and private class that taught acting.  I studied with every theater professor from S. Miami to W. Palm Beach.   I took sub classes,  like acting on camera at nights and the like.   It was a wonderful and possibly better education than perhaps I would have gotten, had I studied with just one professor.  Although, don't get me wrong, I very much regret not having the experience of being a true college student and all that comes with it.  The experiences, friendships, education, etc.

One interesting story was when I was at Broward community college.  I was in a relatively small class and there was a gorgeous boy who sat on the far left of the class, who the teacher chose to assign me a scene with.  So we stood up to do a scene, that seemed to involved kissing, and upon introducing ourselves to one another,  we had to kiss.  It was a bit awkward!  We thought if we got to know one another it would help our performance for the next time.  :)  We hung out a lot, got to know each other really well, we'd play music together - he was/is a great musician.  We became really good friends.  Through this friendship, we talked, as friends generally do and found out that we were born a few hours apart, in the same hospital.   We were side by side in the incubators in the hospital! Our grandparents even knew each other.  17 years later, we were in class together, meeting and kissing.   Technically,  he's the person I've known the longest.

 I should also mention that I was very sick for a long time, as well.  Before they finally diagnosed my cancer at 20 yrs old (I was misdiagnosed for over 5 years)  I was progressively getting sicker.   I would go to work in the morning -  I was selling air time, TV commercials, at the time.  <--I'll get back to that.
However, I started working very young and had a lot of jobs... I was a very poor student and did a work program.  I would leave school after the 3rd period and go to a shop that sold gifts, jewelry and candy - I was their best customer in their candy dept. The people who owned that shop gave Lucille Ball one of her first jobs and I'd ask so many questions about her during my days there.   As long as I worked, I got an A.  I could fail all of my academic classes and with that A, I would graduate that school year.  I did this all throughout high school.  I'm not proud of it... if I could turn back time, I'd definitely show more interest, especially in English.  It was only in my senior year when the English teacher, the only one in all of four years to give a shit, told me she couldn't pass me unless I did the work.  She gave me the opportunity of meeting after class to work privately with her.  I did, of course.  She also asked me if I was gay and gave me my first Anais Nin book :)   I passed and graduated.
 I was a manager in a really cool gift shop at Hollywood mall when I was about 15, the same mall at the same time Adam Walsh (John Walsh's son) was taken.  I will never forget it.  It was the first time that kind of evil was not only evident, but in my actual back yard, literally.  To have that kind of sick, God awful thing happen where I worked, lived... it was way too real and close to home.  It woke a lot of us up.  That's when doors started to get locked and fear and distrust of strangers became something we began to live with.
This didn't, however stop me from sneaking out of the house at night when I was about 16.  I would either take (err steal) my moms car or take a taxi to a little dive bar near the railroad tracks, called Godmothers.  Perfect name, right?  It was owned by two lovely women who just adored me.  They would let me DJ, and as often as I could I'd sneak out and go to this little dyke bar and spin records.  
When I was seventeen I sold cars ... talk about acting!  I told them I could drive a stick shift, but I couldn't.   The customers weren't allowed to drive the cars off of the lot and one day I had a lovely couple in the car, who were very interested in the stick shift version of some lovely car and wanted to take a test drive.   Well, I will never forget the look on their faces in my rear view mirror as I attempted to drive them off the lot.   I'm not sure I ever actually made it to the street.   I didn't make that sale.   I went to Real Estate school, I designed showrooms for a very large furniture warehouse, I did marketing and promotions, I worked in a bank, sold pots and pans door to door,  made pizzas out of the back of a moving truck, was a waitress... I had a lot of jobs ... all while going to school to study theater.  And partying.  It would be very remiss of me if I didn't mention how much partying I did.  Clubs, drugs, women.   Hey, I was also in an all girl rock band for a bit and dating a woman who modeled a bit in France.  I lived the part.  All of this, btw, was before I was 25... and i'm leaving A LOT out.  It must confound people who know me now, to imagine it.

I digressed again, sorry.  Back to the story ...  Ok so,  I was working selling air time and by noon I would find that I was tired and flu like sick and could hardly move.  I would go home and get into bed.   One day, my mother came over and walked into my room with a plastic Oscar replica statue.   I took one look at it, sat bolt upright in my bed and said, "Oh My God, are you telling me that i'm dying?"     <--because all i've wanted is an Oscar before I died.  
I didn't die.  I did, however, beat cancer... twice.

Now, on to the actual reason for this blog... the equivalent of my Academy Award.

In my studies with every professor in S. Fl.  I found myself at one point at Florida Atlantic University.  I loved the school, theater dept. and total experience there.    Their theater professor  was a much older gentleman who was a bit curmudgeonly and pretty much sick of seeing the same monologues hundreds of times over.  He NEVER issued a compliment or praise... good lord, if he smiled, it would send us into shock.

It was a rather large theater department.   On Mondays and Weds.  the entire dept. would have a class, as one.  We'd have to use the auditorium and sit on bleachers, in order to fit us all in.   Then on Tues. and thursdays I had a much smaller class, where we'd use a classroom. The room was so small that one day I was doing a monologue in front of the class and could reach out and touch them, they were so close to me.   It was in this smaller class that I did in fact do a monologue (although I can't remember which play it was from).   The teacher didn't utter a word or show any expression on his face, as usual.

The next class was with the entire dept.  thus in the auditorium.   I was sitting as far as you can on the right side of the bleachers, last in the row.  The professor and his assistants were sitting on the floor as far from me as you could get, on the left of the other side of the bleachers.  The student body between us.   On this day, in this class, they were doing something that I wasn't involved in.  I was talking to a girl in the class, a good friend, when all of a sudden the professor shouts out my name.  "Oh shit"  I thought I was in trouble for talking.   I turned to look at him and he says, in front of the entire theater dept.   Miss Linda, I'm sorry I didn't say anything the other day, but I wanted you to know that your performance of ... (whatever I did, which I can't remember)...  your performance was one of the best I've ever seen.  It was truly spectacular.  He may have said more, but I drifted into a state of shock by then.   My mouth was hanging on the floor.  I turned to look at the entire student body and every one of them was staring at me, with the exact same look... mouth agape.   It was my Oscar.  One of the greatest moments of my life.