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Circuitous Routes



Every once and a while I am struck by the journey that leads us to where we wind up. Education and experience have long lasting and sometimes unexpected results.

When I took algebra in high school, I learned about SOH-CAH-TOA. This is a mnemonic that helps you find missing information about a right triangle, if you know some of the information. For example the “SOH” in the mnemonic stands for Sine (of the angle) equals the Opposite divided by the Adjacent, where the opposite and adjacent are the lengths of two of the sides of the triangle. This is one of those things you learn in school where you say “okay I will learn it for the test, but I am never going to use this in my life.” Then at one point in my life I went to work for a surveyor’s office. Surveyors usually deal in horizontal distances. So if the deed or the survey says that going from point A to point B is 100 feet long, that means it is 100 feet horizontally. If it is steep, you may measure 120 feet on the ground from point A to point B, but when you remove the slope and just measure it as if it were flat, it is 100 feet. It was pointed out to me that we can easily measure the slope distance, and we can easily measure the angle of the slope. With these two pieces of information we can either calculate the elevation difference, or the horizontal distance using SOH-CAH-TOA. Suddenly that tiny piece of high school geometry came flooding back to me. Wow. It’s actually useful!

I have mentioned here before that I like to act in local theater productions, sometimes even writing for them or directing them. It has become an important hobby or artistic expression for me. But I never acted in high school or college. People find it odd that I did not try out for my first play till I was in my thirties. It wasn’t actually my first play. Way back in sixth grade our school did a production of Peter Pan. I don’t remember exactly how I got roped into this but that fact that my best friend Richard wanted to play Captain Hook probably had something to do with it. I tended to want to do whatever he wanted to do. He got the part of Captain Hook and I got Smee, the captain’s first mate. This was fine for me as Smee was a fairly small role and I didn’t really know what I was doing. When we did our first performance I got a big laugh. I had given Smee a funny nasal voice, and the crowd, particularly the younger kids, were eating it up. I got a rush from this experience that I was not expecting. To do something that made an audience laugh; it was exhilarating.

A couple of years later, I was in a junior High production of Dracula. I played a guard at the sanitarium; another small part. I gave my character a Cockney accent, and people laughed. There was that feeling again. Wow! Despite that feeling, it was another twenty years before I tried out for another play. I don’t know, as I got to be an older kid and then young adult, maybe the stakes seemed higher. Making a fool of myself seemed more a probability than getting a positive reaction. I stayed a fan of theater, but couldn’t make myself try it out. Finally after some prodding from my wife, I did it. I auditioned for a production in one of our local community theater groups. I got a part. It turns out that I had learned some things all those years earlier. Funny voices are . .  . funny. Project. Get into the character’s head. Learn your lines, but be ready to think on your feet. Just a few things, but enough to get me in the door (that and the fact that not very many people auditioned for the play).  Oh, I had a LOT yet to learn. I was by no means an accomplished actor, but I had the good fortune in my first couple of plays as an adult, to be directed by wonderful directors who had studied the craft of theater and gave me as good an education as I was likely to find anywhere.

When you are learning a particular lesson, you never know if or when it is going to pop up again in your life. Our life paths cross and crisscross the lessons we learn along the way. Even when something seems unimportant or boring, fate can throw it into your path. I guess if I could tell my younger self something, it would be: pay attention!

Link to Star Liner

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