suddenly i realize why Glee sounds entirely unappealing

I work in a School of the Arts at a university. My building houses studio art (my department), music, art history, and theatre. And the theatre kids are constantly driving me nuts.

Just now I was sitting here at my desk and could hear screaming in the stairwell. It didn’t bother me in the slightest. I just assumed there was a theatre kid in the stairwell, looking for attention. I sure hope no one was getting stabbed or something.

You see, wherever there is a large group of people gathered in my building, being loud and obnoxious, you can be assured that they are from theatre. They just have an irrepressible desire to be SEEN and LOVED and NOTICED, which is probably why they’re compelled to be theatre majors in the first place.  So they hang out in a lobby area near their department’s offices, just down the hall from the mail room with the microwave and tables where I often eat my lunch, as it’s the only microwave in the building.  And they tapdance in the middle of the hall, refusing to shuffle out of my way or let me by.  Or they’re hugging, en masse, in my way. They have an elaborate ritual of hugging.  If I’m trying to quietly read at a table, they’re running lines or loudly arguing over whether or not the Curious Case of Benjamin Button was true to the original F. Scott Fitzgerald short story.  Or some dumb boy is fishing for compliments by negging a group of adoring, slightly awkward girls, who seem very willing to make coffee or lunch runs for the few boys who hang out with their group. Smart dude I guess, being a male minority gets them a lot of favors. Or they’re pacing the hallway having loud, dramatic fights with their parents or boyfriends or girlfriends. Wherever they are, they’re loud, and they’re in the way.

So yeah. Apparently regular contact with drama queen college kids has given me an aversion to the theatre kid types.  Which is sort of weird because I’m friends now, as an adult, with many many former theatre kids.  And thinking about my theatre-type friends, that’s when I realize that the problem isn’t so much theatre kids, it’s 18 year olds.

Because I was once one of them. And I was loud. And I didn’t care if you thought I said the word “vagina” too loudly in the dining hall.  Or if you thought my group of friends was “a blood clot in the vein that is the sidewalk,” an actual comment someone mad when we were making our way to the dining hall for the OMG YOU BETTER NOT EAT EARLY AND MISS DINNER WITH US AT 5 “family dinner” time. And I would bound down the dorm room halls to meet new friends, just excited to be there and completely cracked out.  And I though I didn’t have any elaborate hugging rituals, there was a friend who’d let me rest my head on her chest, maternal style, when I was having a bad day (is there anything more comforting than resting your head on a bosom?).

So maybe I won’t be watching Glee. But it’s not REALLY because I hate theatre kids. It’s because I’m suddenly realizing I’m not a kid anymore, and I’m sorta annoyed by them.