cooking with okra

When I was younger, I had creativity out the ass.  My creativity was an endless geiser of totally non-sensical ideas that anyone in my near vicinity was subject to.  So, for the first years of my life, it was my parents and immediate family who enjoyed the esteemed pleasure of witnessing my ...precociousness?

There were the annual Christmas productions at the fireplace theater in our living room.  Depending on how busy I was that year, either were full-scale productions of music, lights, sound and a coerced little brother brother who acted and sang and danced with me; or me running around with my favorite tree ornaments and making them "speak."  There was the "Country Catastrophe" music show I put on and sold 25 cent tickets to, only to have my mother try to tell me that catastrophe actually meant something negative.  Fuck her for fucking with my alliteration.  Oh well, the posters had already been made and plastered around the house, so everyone was just going to have to deal with it.  I remember getting pissed that my parents didn't make my older brother attend these productions.  "Don't even think about making me go to his baseball games," I would say.  Somehow, I always ended up at my brother's baseball games... playing with the sisters of the team, re-enacting Saved By The Bell episodes.

It didn't take long before I picked up on my family's faux enthusiasm.  I decided I needed a better audience and other young people who shared in my passion for creating, or at the very least, were amused just to watch me be batshit crazy.  One of these friends was Laura.  Laura and I go way back - like 4 years old back.  We went to pre-school together and she enabled my faggotry from the get-go.  We would play dress up and I would dress as the Princess.  For years, Laura playfully used the photographic evidence against me at various times throughout middle and high school.  Still insecure and still worried about what people would say, I always tried to pawn it off like she made me dress up.  Who was I kidding?  I fucking loved those clothes.  I don't recall what it was like when the time came to stop playing dress up, but I can only imagine a mini-Wes in full drag, screaming bloody murder, throwing things, biting arms, tears flying off my face in every direction as I violently shook my head, the tiara crashing to the floor into pieces, as I took off running in tiny pink heels down the driveway in slow-motion for dramatic effect.  Then again, for not remembering, that's a pretty strong visual image.

At some point along the way years later, we got hold of a video camera, and along with another girl in the neighborhood, decided to make our own Saturday Night Live style sketch comedy show.  This was around the time that I put Scream 2 into production in my neighborhood starring me, me, and more me.  Our sketch comedy involved skits like "Cooking With Okra," a parody cooking show and Okra was a send-up of Oprah Winfrey.  If Oprah were to find out about this, I'm sure our asses would have been sued and we would mysteriously end up disappearing, never to be heard of again.  Good thing we went with "Okra."

The amazingness of the situation is that I don't even really know if I knew that okra was a vegetable, making the name "Cooking With Okra" pretty fucking inside for a 12 year old.  That's the thing about my creativity - it is often accidentally genius.

Along with our amazing sketch-naming skills, we created a parody of Scream, long before Scary Movie even thought to exist.  There was a scene with me being stabbed, running to a tree, grabbing it and bursting into an impromptu song and dance number with only one lyric: "I wanna die by the shady tree."  I realize now that sharing this is probably like when people have conversations solely referencing things only they would know.

Laura and I continued being silly together, off-and-on, throughout high school.  We became drama geeks together, starring as fairies (go figure) in A Midsummer Night's Dream.  She ended up being an orphan in one of my crowning creative achievements, a high school production of Annie that I directed and somehow pulled out of my ass during my senior year.

It's funny to compare myself to the kid I was then and the kid I am now.  Some things never change, and my flair for drama and performance lives on.  As does my insane bossiness regarding said drama and performances.  Recently, my mom came up to visit me and she brought a letter that she found at my grandparents' house that I had written at age 11.  It was an meticulously detailed plan for our float in the annual Golf Cart Parade at the campground where my grandparents spent their summers.  It was going to be Olympic themed, with all of us wearing "togo's" (sic) like in the original Greek Olympics.  Before closing, I state: "There's my plan.  Spread it around the family.  I'll see you June 26, 1996!  We'll bring some white sheets just in case."  Strangely enough, it was a plan for my cousins and I, and my older brother's participation was noted as "optional."

I am still that kid.  I still get wildly ambitious, crazy-ass ideas - only now I see them through half as often.  Laura and I never finished "Cooking With Okra," and have lamented about how we wish we still had those tapes to laugh at.  Hopefully one day, we'll still be silly enough to see our creativity through.  Though part of me would rather wait until Oprah is dead and gone and unable to sue us senseless.