I think I discovered that acting was a cool thing to do somewhere around the age of nine or ten. It was at summer school, and I auditioned for the production of \u201cReally Rosie,\u201d in which I played a monkey. I got to wear monkey ears and everything. The highlight was when I got to solo on one verse of the song \u201cChicken Soup with Rice,\u201d and I even remember the words:<\/p>\n
I must have done something right, because one thing led to another, and before I knew it, I was cast as the lead in the next big kiddie production of Harry Nilsson\u2019s The Point<\/span>, playing \u201cOblio the Weirdio,\u201d the only person in the whole village who didn\u2019t have a sharp point growing out of the top of his head. Because of my mutant status, I was banished from the town, and, at one point, I had to bid a tearful goodbye to my parents as I left them forever.<\/p>\n That\u2019s where the story gets interesting.<\/p>\n The script called for me to shake my father\u2019s hand, say \u201cGoodbye, father,\u201d and then say \u201cGoodbye, mother,\u201d and take her in a fond embrace. Except the girl who played my mother was just about my age, and she was short and dumpy looking. I can\u2019t remember anything about her as a human being; I only remember she was fat.<\/p>\n And I refused to compromise my star status by hugging a fat person.<\/p>\n Actually, I think it was more complicated than that. I wasn\u2019t all that comfortable hugging anyone \u2013 I\u2019m still not a touchy\/feely guy by nature \u2013 and hugging a girl would have been about five bases farther than I\u2019d ever gone with any other girl before. There was another cutie who I had hoped would get cast as my mother and be my first-time real hug, but I think I would have balked at getting that intimate with her, too, out of sheer embarrassment. But hugging a chubby gal would have somehow given the impression that I liked her, and would probably have been the equivalent of getting married. It was a major commitment I was too young to make. So I opened negotiations on the subject by bursting into tears and stomping off in a huff and swearing that I wanted to quit, that I wanted to go home, that I didn\u2019t want to have anything to do with this stupid old play anyway.<\/p>\n What a weenie.<\/p>\n The director finally called me at home when he thought of a suitable compromise. I was to take the girl by both of her hands, in a very grand and formal gesture, and I could forgo the hugging. I wasn\u2019t crazy about this, but it kept her at arm\u2019s length, and it wouldn\u2019t make its way into the tabloids.<\/p>\n As I recall this unseemly event at the beginning of my career, I can\u2019t help but feel sympathy for the girl, but even more for the director. I wonder what he told that poor gal. I hope he didn\u2019t say, \u201cStallion doesn\u2019t want to hug a lardo.\u201d And I hope the lardo in question has gone on to live a happy and healthy life, regardless of her dress size.<\/p>\n I hope my loved ones won\u2019t feel funny about hugging me now that I\u2019m equally tubby.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ithink I discovered that acting was a cool thing to do somewhere around the age of nine or ten. It was at summer school, and I auditioned for the production of \u201cReally Rosie,\u201d in which I played a monkey. I got to wear monkey ears and everything. The highlight was when I got to solo ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4869,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions\/4869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}