It’s Friday

Time for me to get serious.

I know what you’re saying right now. You’re saying something like “Why does this clown always write ‘I know what you’re saying right now?'” I’ll tell you why. Because, before today, I was a funny guy.

But not no more I ain’t. Now I’m a serious guy. From now on I’m taking everything seriously—especially myself.

I used to think it was hip to be Dan. But once that song fell from the Top-40 polka charts, I decided to take a good look at my face. You’ll see my smile, it’s out of place. Look a little bit closer, it’s easy to trace …

I seem to have lost my point. Ah, there it is, under the radiator. The point is, I have to start being more serious. People have been telling me this for years. They say “You have to be more serious,” to which I reply “Oooh, nice shoes” or “You need a Kleenex.”

I remember when I was in my junior year in high school and I played George Gibbs, All-American, in Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” Now, George is what you might call a major-league dork. But he is the only character in the play who gets to kiss the girl, so I took the role.

Oh, give me a break—I was 16.

Anyway, during the two months of rehearsals my friends and I acted like idiots. We were always up to some kind of tomfoolery, like putting poison in the makeup and gunpowder in the lights. Kids’ stuff. Needless to say, our director was a little honked off.

One day, I broke the sound system by blasting “You Light Up My Life” a little too loud. Some songs you just have to crank, you know? Anyhow, my director pulled me aside and said “You are a fool. All you ever do is flit around like a butterfly, acting like you don’t have a care in the world. You never take anything seriously.” I think she also said “You smell bad.”

I didn’t care. I went about my business, and when the curtain went up that weekend, I did my job. I fired off my lines without a hitch and my fly was always zipped. The best scene I had was with my sister, who played my mother. We had to conduct an argument, something she and I excel at. My mother cried.

The director gave me a candle shaped like a garage to thank me for a job well done. I didn’t ask for an apology, but I would rather have gotten a set of pencils with my name on them like everyone else instead of the candle.

Wait a minute. Now that I think about it, I did have one major screw-up during the play. Any guesses? Write them down and pass them to the front of the class. No peeking. Ah, someone got it—it was the kissing scene. You had to know this was coming.

What happened was, I hardly knew the girl, and she had a boyfriend. Plus the kiss had to be one of those “freeze frame” jobs where we would hold it for about three minutes. I decided to play it safe and do a “stage kiss”—lips barely touching, mouths closed, etc.

Well, she had about three inches of lipstick on, and in the middle of the kiss I moved my head to look at the folks in the audience, sitting with their mouths hanging open. When I moved, the lipstick tore a 12-inch gash in my face, extending from my lower lip to my pancreas. No, no, it was only a smear, but man was it big. The smear, I mean.

The laughter was loud and boisterous. And again, my mother cried.

But that was the only mistake I made. I did my job, and I did it to the best of my ability, despite all my goofing around in rehearsal. The director hates my guts to this day, but I came away with a good set of friends, great memories and compliments from stage critics the world over. I even got the girl. For a while, anyway.

But now I know I have to be more serious. I realized this the other day when a professor came up to me and said “You have to be more serious,” to which I replied “You had something with onions for lunch, didn’t you?”

Me be serious? You be serious.

Dan

Moran