Friday, August 06, 2010

Niles West students to perform in Edinburgh :: News :: PIONEER PRESS :: Morton Grove Champion

Good job, Niles West Thespians! I hope your chaperones on this trip are a lot more conscientious than the ones I had when I traveled to London with a school group... although our parents were promised constant supervision, the chaperones pretty much buggered off and left us alone. Which, you know, cool. I got ditched by my group in Windsor (I found them and I don't think they even realized I was missing.) and also spent a day by myself, shopping and poking around Oxford Street. We were supposed to be in small (chaperoned) groups, but we all kind of split up and did our own thing. We met up for high tea. I was never worried about it, really, I had a tube card and I knew where the hotel was. If I ever got lost, I figured I'd go back to the hotel and start over again. Still, I don't think my parents would have taken the same view.

The evening bed check went something like this:

knock, knock, knock
My roommate: Yeah?
Chaperone (I'll call him "Mr. Johnson"): Are you all in there?
Roommate: Yeah!
Mr. Johnson: Okay, goodnight!

And he left. He never asked us to open the door, or verify that all of us were in the room, it was just "Yeah" and off he went. I am sure I have told this story before. One of my classmates snuck off and saw Sunset Boulevard (Patti was gone by then, this was with Betty Buckley) - he got his own ticket and when the time came, he took himself off to the theater.

Compare this with the choir trip I took as a senior. We went to Minnesota, of all places, to sing at the Mall of America. Not only were doors opened and heads counted at evening bed check, our choir director taped our doors shut so nocturnal wanderings to visit classmates would not occur. In the morning, she checked the tape to make sure it had not been broken.

Anyway, break a leg, Westies!!

Niles West students to perform in Edinburgh :: News :: PIONEER PRESS :: Morton Grove Champion

2 comments:

Heidi said...

You'll call him "Mr. Johnson"? That's creative. :-)

BroadwayBaby said...

Isn't it? I would otherwise change his name to protect the innocent, but he spent 4 years thinking I was the Stranger, so he's none the wiser, honestly...