Mitchell
Sandi
Me
As always, there must be a backstory.
There was an old rickety amusement park in our state – similar to Adventureland, if you know the movie – where you took your life into your hands on the rides, and pretty much everyone who lived in the state worked there at least at some point. Like, my friend Betsy worked the cotton candy counter one summer. I mean, this is just one example of many. Cut to: college. My friend Mitchell actually auditioned for the amusement park’s “entertainment” – actually I think I did too. Maybe we all did? No idea. The point is: Mitchell actually got cast. It was a big deal! He was cast as some douchebag called Doc Abbott, who stood on a little platform and made bad jokes, pulling out fake floppy fishes and shit like that. Low-rent Borscht Belt shit. So Mitchell is there at his first day of rehearsal with all the other cast members – dancers, “comedians”, whatever. And there was all this group stuff they had to do, besides their specialty acts. Meanwhile, Mitchell is mortified at the Doc Abbott script he’d been given. Like, it’s horrible stuff. Not even sitcom level. It’s like “take my wife, please” but not EVEN! He’s already thinking, “How the hell am I gonna get out of this.” As he is thinking this, a hot Rhode Island girl (it’s a type, think Mercedes Ruehl in Fisher King), wearing spandex tights, a bandeau, and leg warmers, was complaining about having to do all this OTHER stuff – skits etc. – and she whined, thick Rhode Island accent, “Allz I wanna do is dee-yance.” This was Mitchell’s breaking point. He didn’t return to rehearsal the next day. I think he basically just never showed up again. lol
But because Rhode Island is what it is, we would go there all the time, still, in the summer, to fuck around and buy underage beer and go on the flume. The whole Doc Abbott thing made it a little precarious: like, would they all be mad at him? (Of course they were!) Should we HIDE from management? Should we duck and run if we saw someone with a badge? It’s not like we were banned from the park but it was potentially awkward! I mean, he just never showed up after the first rehearsal! But to NOT go to the amusement park was NOT an option.
So one day, Mitchell, Mitchell’s sister Sandi and I went. It was a hot day. We drank beer. Nobody was 21. We went on the flume and got soaking wet. We had a ball. We were also basically hiding from any amusement park employees who might notice that the Doc Abbott deserter was strolling around in the park.
Then we saw it. The Doc Abbott stage where Mitchell was supposed to spend his summer barking out terrible jokes to an irritated drunk crowd. And so we did the only thing we COULD do.
Way to fly under the radar, kids.
