I hope you have this experience someday.

...so heartwarming.

Last night, I googled a friend, to see if there were any photos of him on the web. He's an actor, and I am out of contact with him. I was hoping to see if he had been doing anything important enough to be photographed.

I found some imgaes of him! However, the photos were from many years ago, in college. It was from this theatre group we had at the University of Iowa, called No Shame Theatre. Every Friday night, at 11:00pm, we would pack ourselves into Theatre B, paying $1.00 for the pleasure of actors trying out their personal works. Most of these pieces we viewed were funny. Some were dramatic, some were meant to provoke thought. The pieces performed were submitted at 10:30pm, and there were largely no rules about who could perform. You just couldn't mess up the theatre.

In any case, I was looking through the No Shame (Iowa City) website, and found their archives. This surprised me , because when I was doing the No Shame thing, the internet was just beginning to be a reality (1988-1992). Most of their archives are just notes from the order of the performances. Very few scripts exist from back then; if they do, it is because the writer/actor submitted them within the last few years.

I was intrigued by all of this, and set out to find my name. I performed a few times in No Shame Theatre, and wondered if it was logged. I couldn't believe what I found.

In some notes that a woman took from back then, were these words:

"...wonderfully enticing limericks from a beautiful young woman...who is that woman in blue??? (sounds like A-- H---)."

She was talking about me. I was the one with the limericks. I had this schtick where I would pretend to give a poetry lesson, and then completely botch whatever form of poetry it was. The people found it funny, I remember that. It worked at the time.

What I didn't know was some woman I had never met thought I was a beautiful young woman. She also thought enough of me to add my name (spelled incorrectly, but she had only heard it, not read it), and ask herself who I might be, in her journal that she kept of the performances.

I am stunned and happy. My heart is 3 times the size it was yesterday.

Someone thought I was the beautiful young woman in blue.
Someone thought I was funny and intriguing.
Someone thought I was important enough to literally take note.

And I never knew it.


--groovygrrl, queen of nostalgia