Point To J

I got inadvertently schooled by a cast mate today, who shall remain nameless, but who is supercool.  (Honestly, I could spend my entire life trying to be a better version of myself, complete with therapy, surgery, and personal trainers, and never get to be a tenth as cool as this guy.  Mini-swoon.)

Someone in our cast likes to make endless repetitive versions of the same joke, and I've noted it to a few other cast members so that I could have some people to shoot looks at when the joke comes up, again.  It comes up a lot.  I noticed that I was starting to get a little too into being irritated about this endless joke, so I set myself a limit - 15 more times I could notice it and make any kind of comment on it, and then I just plain had to stop.  Because it would drive me nuts, and I don't have enough brain cells to waste on something like that.

I've been counting down from 15 (I'm currently on #9 after a day and a half), and I happened to mention it to the supercool J, who very gently and matter-of-factly said, "Well, he's nervous.  It's just a verbal tic because he's trying to combat the nerves.  He's a total vet but he doesn't usually do this kind of work."

He's right, of course, and though he did not say it in any kind of reproachful way, I could see how my noticing of it was either my own pettiness or just the answering nervousness in myself being irritated by having to see evidence of itself.  This isn't my comfort zone either, tripping around these dancers who can fly and these recent college grads who are on a trajectory towards Broadway and these veterans who simply flow from Equity paycheck to Equity paycheck.  We're on an enormous stage and we have to fill it up.  The room is full of the best people in the city.  I find the whole thing utterly overwhelming and I'm only slightly more important than furniture in this show, so I can only imagine the pressure on any actor that has to drive the plot along.

So, point to J, who has made me appropriately ashamed of myself.  We all do what we need to do to get through, and sometimes it's make a mild, easy, well-known, trope of a joke over and over, like a touchstone, to remind ourselves that we are the same despite the changing circumstances.

I'm going to try to let the count go - if I finish it, at the very least I'll shift to noticing whether or not I'm scared to death myself of this awesome project.  9 more times, then I have to let it go either way, but at maybe those 9 times can teach me something.