Time to Check In

Almost every day for the past 6 weeks I’ve received an email with the subject “It’s Time to Check In”. In fact, I’ve performed 43 shows in 31 cities and 18 states during that time. Plus, I had a first for me while performing when I had a volunteer throw up on stage during the show. Needless to say, I’ve been busy. So…what have you been up to?

It’s hard to think back to any specific flight I’ve taken, since after 40 some odd different planes, they all start looking the same. However, I do have a lot of specific memories about the shows I did. Obviously the standout would be my upchucking volunteer. The wonderment occured in West Virginia. I had spent a couple days visiting my good friend Mod (retired jump rope coach) before I went to perform at an Upward Basketball event. On the bottom platform of the church auditorium my fateful volunteer came up. He seemed to be doing just fine as I was using him to help explain the topic of the night. However, half-way through he looked left, he looked right, then stared right at me as he regurgitated his recently devoured spaghetti dinner on the carpeted stage. (quick sidenote: he didn’t have any sauce with his noodles so there was no staining effect going on.) I can honestly say, I was a little dumbstruck. During my brief moment of decision making, he gave me a second helping on the floor before his dad ushered him out of the room quite quickly.

So here’s the big question…what would you do? If you call attention to the pile of noodles, things are going to go south in a hurry. If you ignore it…will anyone listen or will they just stare at the floor. I decided to ignore it and try to watch where I was walking. I concluded my message, did a freestyle and finished with the ever popular glow rope routine. The part that worried me was not being able to see anything with the lights out and accidentally stepping in the pile of noodles. My worries were quickly obviated as the noodles actually glowed quite well when illuminated by my rope.

I can’t help but laugh at the thought of the entire situation. I met a lot of great people and had a lot of great shows during this tour. Performing is always an adventure and the one thing I have learned over the years…just when you think you’ve seen it all, someone will surprise you. Here’s to the next surprise.