The Making of An Actor

Oldest brushed the sweat off his face one hot summer day last July. "This mowing lawn is too much like work,' he grumped.

I almost laughed. Poor kid! He should have been out picking rock at 5 a.m, like I had to do when I was young., trudging through mud that stuck to my dew soaked shoes or getting halfway into a sea of thistles, while finding rocks that needed to be hauled to a rock pile. I'm certain this is what makes hell, so I have no sympathy for my son. He's got it easy, pushing around a lawn mower.

"Well, what do you want to do?" I asked. We had hauled a mower to a property we owned, then caught a lunch at a nearby town. 

"Well," he said, between bites of food. "I want to be an actor."

Now my parents would have laughed at me if I had said such a thing. They might have told me to get real, to forget it, that it was a hopeless fantasy. Certainly they would have told me that they wouldn't drive me town to attend any after school activity. "  But I knew that if I crushed his dream, he would spend the rest of his life wondering, 'What if..." 

"How are you going to do that?' I asked.

"I don't know," he admitted.

Now the story goes hyperspeed. Moments later he heard a radio advertisement looking for kids to try out for a special conference/talents show in Florida. With my blessing he tried out. They called back, and he attended an interview and screentest.  Thirty-two kids out of 550 families called back, and they didn't care if you couldn't afford the entrance fee. Oldest had the money, entered, rehearsed, and went. The experience was incredible, informative because of the industry executives who served on a Q & A panel, elegant because of a red carpet night, tense because of the competition. 

In the two weeks we were in Florida, a change came over him.  "He walks differently," commented The Man Who Puts Up With Me.  And Oldest had. There was more confidence, maybe because of all the pretty girls that had flocked around him at the Florida event. Maybe it was because he found ot he was neither the big fish in the ocean, nor the littlest.

 He signed up to take a summer theater academy in a nearby city to learn more about theater, perhaps even join in the the mainstage musical, a professional performance directed by a New York director.  To fund it, he wrote grant, and has to perform for a review board for the money.  Sunday he auditions for the musical.

Valentine's evening, he soloed the song, "Save the Last Dance for Me" with a jazz band behind him at a large concert at our hometown gym. I watched as our son went from a kid who used to sing while standing stock still, to walking, smiling, gesturing, entertaining, performing! The transformation in his talents in several short months was simply amazing.

As if that weren't enough, on a lark, we sent his headshot to a modeling agent in Minneapolis,  and a couple of weeks later, signed both boys on with her. We head out soon to do photoshoots for the agency, then respond to casting calls as they happen. The money is much better than mowing lawns, so Oldest, who had initially snubbed the idea of modeling, is now anxious to try out for commercials of any kind. 

Consider that all of this has happened in less than eight months. Eight!  I feel somedays that I'm standing by the breeze off a train engine. Whoosh! The kid mentions his dreams, now he's about to embark on living them. This boy isn't even old enough to drive!  There are moments I feel that this whole pathway is a dream, and that because he has believed it could all happen, it just might. 

These next few months he will grow, and I get the privilege of watching that take place.  Where these adventures take us might be worth writing about in the future.  Until them, think of us these next couple of days as we can use just a ton of positive energy coming our way!