Ghostbusters

My old elementary school used to be pretty hard up for school events.  Sometimes we would all gather in the gym and watch a cartoon, or we’d assemble to have some old guy tell us how dangerous bears were, or sometimes a dude would bring a bunch of reptiles to school, but, other than that, there really wasn’t a lot happening.  

One of the things the school did to try and spruce things up a bit was to have “Talent Shows” a few times a year.  Now, they were called Talent Shows, but nobody had any real talents.  What this assembly always turned into was a bunch of skits that weren't very funny or entertaining followed by a number of lip-sync/air-band routines where people got up and pretended to play instruments and sing to their favorite songs.  You know, exactly what people do in front of their mirrors at home with their bedroom doors closed, only in this case it was done in front of a gymnasium full of people.

Now, the skits were more just for the really little kids; the Kindergarteners and Grade One kids would come up and act out scenes or songs from their favorite cartoons.  Air-bands, on the other hand, were for the big kids, the cool kids.  Nobody from our school had ever played any instruments, so over the years we had all become air-band connoisseurs.  You couldn’t get up there and just pretend you had an instrument; that’s fucking stupid! No, no, what you did was go to the equipment room in the gym and gather up things that could stand in for instruments.  Mop handles were microphone stands, badminton-racquets were guitars, pylons were trumpets, batons were drumsticks, etc.  Everybody had to have something unless it was an all-girl air-band, in which case there might be a few dancers, but dancers were the only ones that were allowed to be up there without an “instrument”.  After an air-band had performed, it wasn’t silly in the least to say things like, “Oh, man, did you see the way Trevor totally nailed that guitar solo?!” or “Brian’s drumroll blew my mind!”  If the right song was chosen, an air-band could even get a standing ovation.  It was like the entire school suffered from a mass delusion when it came to these Talent Shows.  I couldn’t even tell you what visitors to the school must have thought when they saw the way we went nuts for imaginary musicians.  It must have looked like a rock concert in a mental hospital.

Anyway, I remember attending one of these talent shows when I was in Grade 2 or 3, and seeing an older girl I had a crush on (yeah, I had crushes in Grade 2) doing an interpretive dance routine/imaginary music video to "I Think We're Alone Now" while lip-syncing the lyrics.  She had her "boyfriend" come up and be a part of the scene too.  He sat there, slumped in a chair, looking all cool while this angel "sang" to him.  She looked like she could sound just like Tiffany.  I sat in the crowd, years younger than the two of them, fuming that this guy had the cojones to smirk and laugh and pay attention to his buddies in the crowd while this girl pretended-to-sing her heart out for him.  In my twisted young mind I thought:

"This guy doesn't understand you!  What are you doing with him? Sure, maybe he looks cool in the tight black jeans with the three parallel tears on each thigh, and that black leather jacket over the Metallica T-shirt is pretty rad, I’ll give him that, but c'mon, this guy is just a Slash-wannabe.  If you stay with this Grease-stain you’re headed down a path that that leads to unemployment, Zesty Doritos for supper, dope-smoking, and receiving nothing but cartons of cigarettes in your stocking every Christmas."

I guess she wasn’t the brightest girl around because she stayed with that dirtbag for most of the schoolyear.  It didn’t matter though, my crush only got more intense.  When the next Talent Show came up, I decided I had to get in on it.  I knew this girl was into music and performing arts and crap, so being in the Talent Show was an excellent way to get her to notice me.

Luckily for me, one of the more meek and quiet students in my class had had a sudden burst of confidence, and decided he was going to organize an air-band routine to the Ghostbusters theme-song.  It was perfect!  Everybody loved that fucking song.  Standing ovation for sure!  I asked this guy if I could be a part of the band, and he said it was no problem.  He then very stupidly went on to tell six other guys that it was also no problem for them to join either.

On the day of the talent show the eight of us were discussing our positions.  We’d have two singers with mop handles, two badminton-racquet guitar players, two tennis-racquet bass players, a baton drummer, and a pylon trumpeter.  I was to be a guitar player.  Ladies love guitar players, I was so in.  All I had to do was a real legit-looking solo, maybe play the badminton racquet with my teeth like a real guitar god, and this girl was going to flush the fucking toilet on her current boyfriend and come running to me.  Yessir, I’d be dating an older woman by recess.  A real cougar, now that would be just aces.

While I was day-dreaming about my soon-to-be girlfriend serenading me with Tiffany songs, we were called up to perform.  I was SO ready!  We went to our positions, and suddenly, something went wrong.  There was only one mop handle, so one of the singers grabbed the pylon, which meant that the pylon guy had to grab a badminton racquet, which meant that when I went to grab MY badminton racquet there were none left.  I quickly scanned around for anything I could turn into an “instrument”.  I didn’t care what, I’d turn a vacuum cleaner into a tuba at this point, but everything had been claimed.  I had banked it all on a badminton-racquet and lost.

I had just become a dancer.

Now, when I tell you that I froze with stage-fright, please understand that no one has ever frozen as badly as I did that day.  I mean I froze up goddamned solid.  I went catatonic.  I stood there like a perfect statue, mouth half-open, staring wide-eyed at the entire school staring back at me.  It didn't matter how catchy the Ghostbusters theme-song was.  It didn't matter how realistic the guys with the badminton-racquets looked.  All eyes were on the fat kid having some sort of psychological episode in front of them.  I could see some of the older boys laughing, including that Slash-wannabe motherfucker my future-wife was dating.  My eyes scanned the crowd and when I spotted her my heart split in two.  The look on her face was a mixture of horror and disgust. 

"Jesus, what's wrong with that fat kid," I could hear her thinking, “I would NEVER date anyone that uncool. I’m soooo glad I have my current shit-rat boyfriend”.

A teacher at the back was waving her arms at me, trying to get my attention.  My eyes moved to her, and I could see her pretending to dance and mouthing the words, “Dance! You have to dance!" to me.  Sorry, Ma'am.  I appreciate your attempts to help me out here, I’m sure you’ll go to heaven for that and all, but I think we both know it’s too late for me.  I've been frozen here for almost a full minute.  To unfreeze now would just be even weirder.  If I were to suddenly burst into a dance right now it would just startle these people so bad that they’d probably jump a little.  No, if the alternative to what I’m doing right now carries with it any risk of me looking even MORE crazy, then I’ll just stick with what I’m doing.

Afraid that I was ruining his chances of getting a standing ovation, the geek that arranged this whole thing tried to salvage it by doing a big Corey Hart-esque running knee-slide on the last note of the song.  What he forgot was that Corey Hart didn’t do knee-slides on waxed gymnasium floors while wearing “Where’s Waldo” jogging pants.  This dork crashed into the first row of the audience, a bunch of Grade 1 kids still congratulating themselves on a smashing rendition of that “Chim-Chim-Cher-ee” song from Mary Poppins.  This guy slams into some little kids with a running knee-slide at the end of the Ghostbusters theme-song, and somehow I was still the one remembered as being the jackass that ruined the routine. 

Whatever.

I spent the rest of the year NOT having that cougar girlfriend and hating the guts of the opportunistic arsehole who had jumped from mop-handle singer to pylon-trumpeter and thrown everything into chaos.  To this day I can’t listen to “I Think We’re Alone Now” without getting teary-eyed, and the Ghostbusters theme-song makes me have to go to the bathroom.