Yes and No

Envisioning myself as a "leading man", I met my fellow thespians for the first of our eight weeks of Thursday evening acting classes. As I mentioned earlier, sadly, I was the oldest in the class. We sat around the lobby of The Actor Factory getting to know one another. Chris, the boss, was there to greet us as well as our instructor, Alissa. At 8:00, we went into the room to begin preparing for our Oscar's. We went around the room introducing ourselves and giving our names and what brought us here. Most were students in either high school or college, but a few had jobs. But all were bright young people. Chip Hoover was a petroleum landman who, on several occasions, drove in from assignments in Texas or the far corners of Oklahoma to attend class with his lovely wife Leah. Leah will appear in the next "Twilight Saga: Eclipe" movie. This will hit the theatres in June 2010. I have heard it is about vampires. Robin Garner is a very cute and perky English teacher from a small town close to Shawnee and my first scene partner. "C" was a student from Edmond and another "C" was a student from Moore. Normanda Pelton, a beautiful young lady who had just graduated from high school in Little Axe. "V", an OU student, was a natural born Russian of Korean descent and did a marvelous job of saying all his lines in English even though his native tongue was Russian. "A" was a student finishing high school and was gearing up for Hollywood. "H", my back-booth-Boomerang-buddy, was from the Dallas area and a freshman at OU majoring in anthropology. There were just four of us guys in the class. Great ratio if I were (Joy and I disagree on the use of "was" or "were" here. She said, "when it is contrary to fact...blah, blah, blah, blah". She won) 40-50 years younger.

Our first exercise was just to warm up. Stand and relax and get into your body. Stretch, wiggle your arms, legs, rotate your neck, breathe in and then out loudly, jump around and make a lot of noise (this to release your inhibitions), and then make your tongue get the peanut butter from all areas of your mouth. This limbers your tongue so you can speak better. A few more exercises and then we started the learning part. These warm up exercises were a part of every class.

Alissa matched us up with other students for our first experience in this new field. Robin and I were partners. She is a first time, high school English teacher. She amused us with the interesting things her students would say to her in class. Such as the time a 15-year old student raised his hand and asked "Mrs. "R", how often do you have sex"? Say, I bet she could answer my "was or were" grammar question.

Our assignment was to say "Yes" and "No" to each other until our teacher told us to stop. We did this for about 20 minutes. Seemed like three hours. But, we almost told a story in this time. You say that for awhile and then one might raise his voice louder and the other would naturally follow. Saying it lower the other would follow. Put a little whine emphasis in the word "yes" and the other might come back with a resounding 'NO". Interesting how that worked. Then we were asked to come up with a scenario for our partnership. We decided we were husband and wife and I wanted to buy a new flat screen television for the home. And, she did not. No matter how much, I pleaded "yes", she never got off that damn "no". Still no other words except yes and no. After another long period, Alissa had us start convincing the other person with actual arguments instead of yes and no. I put up all the logical arguments for a flat panel televison set: football and basketball could be seen better, golf courses would look more plush, watching NASCAR races would seem like we were in the driver's seat. Robin had all the illogical comebacks: too expensive, no room, too expensive, too big, cost too much, where would be put it, not in our budget. As you can see, I had all the winning ideas on my side. But, she threw in a clinker. "We just bought one last week!!! We don't NEED two!!! Well, that was hard to overcome. My fate was sealed. Now I have an inkling into why I never seem to win at home. I will bet her husband doesn't either. Women will just out maneuver you.

Once the exercise was finished, we discussed our thinking and rationale about the Yes and No experience. It was interesting, but I was ready to get onto the why we were here. To learn to act.