...and this is why you never write about your grandpa's lotion...

The play starts this weekend.  Because of the fact that being Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing is my oldest dream, I am finding it really difficult to wrap my head around this.  It’s easier to think, “Hmm… I was supposed to get married on March 25, and then I never would have been in Much Ado About Nothing.”  But thinking, “This is the first thing you ever knew you really wanted to do.  And it’s all going to be over April 23.”  Now that is depressing.  I don’t like to think about it, really.  I know it’s going to happen, and soon at that.  And I know that I will have time to do things again, but I’m going to have to worry about getting everything done now.  I’ll have to worry about when I’m going to see other people from the play now.  If I think about it too much, I want to cry.  I want to cry over a play.  Really?  Come on now, that’s ridiculous.

I’ve been doing little things to try to make up for it.  One thing in particular is writing new notes for every performance.  The goal is to ease my way out of the play, but I see that backfiring, don’t you?  Oh well, at any rate, the script calls for two love sonnets—one from me, and one from a guy named Justin who’s playing Benedick.  While Justin hasn’t even written out any of his Spanish homework, I’ve taken it upon myself to try to write something new every night for the last scene.  No, this doesn’t mean I’m writing a new love sonnet every night, or even a new love letter.  I was told once never to write anything that I wouldn’t want to be published, so random notes will have to suffice.

The first night, I counted out the lines on the paper and explained that love sonnets are a little useless.  After all, fourteen lines of poetry can’t really contain extreme amounts of affection.  To make it extra awkward, I drew a hidden Mickey on the note.  Justin, in his joy at actually getting a note, promptly lost it.  Boy, am I glad I didn’t end up trying to write a shoddy love sonnet.

Last night, I gave him a list of random facts about me.  This note came from the fact that I was struggling through homework and listening to “Introducing Me” from Camp Rock 2.  It didn’t include anything major.  The list included things like, “I eat tomatoes the way some people eat apples; ironically, I’m not a fan of semicolons; I sometimes sing myself to sleep.”  Nothing profound, nothing to write home about.

My most recent note to him started out about my beloved cat and why the world should love him.  Then I remembered that Justin doesn’t like cats.  I switched gears and decided to write about my favorite smell.  After writing out this letter and smearing some of the smell onto the piece of paper, I realized that I was holding the weirdest thing I had ever written in my life.  And it was about to be used as a one-time prop.  That would end up going to a guy who would read it and have no idea how to respond to it.  Who may consequently think that the letter (not to mention the person writing it) is nuts.  And then, I felt like a moron.

I mean, sure, writing about the senses can be awesome.  This note could have potentially been 

normal had it not been for that fact that it is about the lotion that my grandfather used to use.  It was a girly lotion from Crabtree and Evelyn, and I currently own what I believe to be the last bottle in existence.  The scent was discontinued when I was in 4^th grade, so when the quarter of the container that I have is gone, the smell will disappear into family history.  I wrote about how the lotion smells like learning how to recognize trees in the area, sitting at my grandpa’s desk while he played computer games, family parties.  These are things that won’t mean anything to anyone else. But to me, that lotion smells like all of my happy childhood memories.

So what’s the moral of the story?  Not sure.  Don’t write about lotion?  If you are going to write about lotion, make sure the person who reads about it gives a hoot?  If you’re going to write about lotion, make sure you are at least passionate about it?  Never ask your folks what hotdogs are made of?  At least the LAST one makes sense.