Drama Nerds

Now that soccer season has (finally, finally) come to a close, my 15-year-old stepdaughter is widening her circle of sporty girl friends to include a new group of teenagers.

She has earned the frankly forgettable role of The Teacher in her school’s fall play, joining a cast comprising several other fresh-scrubbed freshmen along with the theater department’s usual suspects- a pack of jaded, black-clad upperclassmen, otherwise known as Ac-Tors.

Otherwise known as drama nerds.

You remember the classic drama nerd, right? The guy who wore a Shakespearean hat to class and spouted off “thees” and “thous” with reckless abandon… The chick with unwashed hair parted down the mirror, long skirts, an armful of Albee and Chekov and a sour look on her face… The vertically-challengeed, pock-marked wisenheimer…

The Glorious Stage was about the only place these misfits felt right at home.

Yet I can understand how drama nerds could hold a certain allure for a young freshman girl. I can understand how one might theoretically nurse a crush on the Senior member of the pack, even though he is a tall, pale redhead with a woman’s bob. I can see how one might overlook these problem areas because he was rilly rilly good in The Man of La Mancha. I could accept the possibility that one might write bad poetry to him for an entire year and talk to him for hours on the phone each night, even though one’s mother has told one that one won’t be dating for a whole ‘nother year. This is all hypothetical, of course…

Anyway, uh, returning to the present, with Halloween approaching, the drama nerds of Suburban High School are teaching their freshman neophytes all about the ghosts of SHS.

There’s the football player who supposedly bled to death just a few years ago in the Green Room during a game. (“Why was he in the Green Room?” I asked 15. “I don’t know,” she said. “That doesn’t really make sense, does it?”) The DNs think he’s the evil spirit that’s been plaguing them lately.

There’s a dude in a long black coat and black sunglasses who one Sophomore swears she’s seen playing the piano backstage (she’s had a few too many ‘shrooms, if you ask me).

And then there’s Sophie. She lived in a cottage that burned down on the high school property 50 years ago. Sophie was a Senior who never got the chance to graduate- and now spends her time haunting drama nerds. Oh, they see her all the time.

Yesterday, the DNs decided it was time to let their freshmen in on a drama department ritual that goes back many, many semesters. They led the freshmen inside the Green Room and shut the door, revealing a ghostly scrawl on the back. I’ll recount the rest in 15’s own words…

“It was just really weird, you know? It was so weird! It didn’t make sense. It said like, This is the day it all happens! This is the day you… slide down a razor blade into alcohol. This is the day you, um. It was really gross. This is the day you… give birth to a puddle of diarrhea.”

At this point, I burst out laughing. 15 did, too.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I know!” 15 said. “And they made us read it aloud and be really serious. And they said Sophie wrote it and that we were supposed to pass it down to the freshmen who come after us. And then Susan (another freshman) said, ‘There are a lot of grammatical errors here. She spelled alcohol wrong and wrote ‘don’t’ instead of doesn’t. How could Sophie have been a Senior?!’ And then one of the Drama Nerds started crying! And they told me to come with them, because I was the only freshman who wasn’t laughing, but I had to try really hard not to!”

15 was pulled by the DNs to a sofa, where they surrounded her and told her she was the only one who understood them.

“I don’t know why they said that,” she said. “Why me?”

“I bet it was because you have that gift I’ve told you about,” I said. “You have this knack for making everyone feel special. You make the babysitter feel special. You make the nerds feel special. You make me feel special. Your dad is really good at it, too. It’s a quality I wish I had.”

15 beamed. “Thank you!” she said.

“And you really need to remember your drama nerd stories for your novel,” I said.

15 spent the summer working on a story about a girl named… Enid Yenid (that name has not been changed- It was too good to alter for the purposes of this blog). Enid Yenid is a nerd who gets a makeover and becomes popular. So far, 15 has written 12 chapters.

“That’s true,” she said, sitting back. “I really need to add drama nerds to my book now…”

Somebody get this girl a blog.