Today I got to working, but not until I did my routine: Check Rachel Maddow, look over the New York Times, and then of course check facebook. Well I didn’t have a ton of my own work to do so I spent a little extra time on facebook. While I was perusing people’s posts and taking notice to what everyone was thinking about what had happened with the recall Scott Walker election, I then noticed that I had been added to a new group on facebook, the Wisconsin 4-H Showcase Singers page.
We all have moments in our lives that will just stay ours. A moment where we enjoy time spent, learn a ton, have life changing relationships and we inevitably grow as a person. I have two moments in which I was forever changed but the events that happened were with people that just came in and out of my life for those specific moments. Yes, I was able to keep one or two of those connections, but for the most part, these are spots in my life that I keep close to my heart and don’t get the opportunity to reminisce with others. One of those times for me was the summer I studied in Cuba and the other was the two summers I spent with the Wisconsin 4-H Showcase Singers.
I was in high school and had no clue about anything. I mean no clue, not of the world, not of who I was, not of what I could accomplish and not of how people could impact my life. I remember getting to our two week workshop on the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh campus and thinking, “does this director know that I have no dance experience at all?” It was all up from there and turned out to be one of the best experiences from my teenage years.
Other memories that pop out are when I was driving to our first performance in Manitiwoc and the ostriches loose, running across the highway at an ostrich farm outside of Fon Du Lac, WI. I remember sneaking out one night with others to get peroxide to bleach our hair. I remember getting a group j-walking ticket on the Madison campus at seven in the morning with no traffic at all. I also remember being the first people to stay in the dorms at the State Fair Grounds and thinking how great college would be. I will cherish the moment when in a dance routine, a girl half my size was suppose to pull me off the floor and in order to do so, I had to get my foot directly under me. I was so uncoordinated that learning the move took me forever to get, but after a couple extremely loud knee pops, I got it. I’m pretty sure she remembers that too.
Above all though, I remember learning the love of applause from groups larger than my high school could provide and getting in the muck of balancing a job and touring career at age seventeen while taking comfort that everyone with me was doing the same thing. I get angry at technology and can lecture on how it is taking away from our one-on-one connections but then a gift like this happens and I can only put my foot in my mouth and say “Yank Yoo”