Last night I had a dream that we were having a sleepover for our middle school girls and that I had to fill in a role in a drama at the last minute.  As the music started to play, I wasn’t worried about the fact that I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing — I was too worried that I would fall off the stage.  I woke up in a cold sweat in the night and was happy to find myself safely in my bed and not on a stage in front of a few hundred middle school girls.

The dream made me think about an old Starlite story that I wanted to tell you, my precious interlings.  “Old” being the operative word as we’ve been around for, umm, 5 years.  Whatev’.

At one of our first sleepovers — I think it may have been our second or third — we decided to have a game that put all the different program directors against each other on stage.  We made them do random things — I can’t remember everything they did, but I do remember that they had to eat live crickets.

We are delicate flowers, no?

Anyway, the games started at 3 a.m.  In other words, I was about to fall over asleep at the start of it but forced myself to stay awake and try to get some enthusiasm going.  I was co-hosting the game with Craig, one of our male volunteers.  He was MUCH more enthusiastic than I was.  See for yourself:

Anyway, as the games began to wind down, Craig and I grabbed tall chairs to sit on because we were both about to declare we’d never do this again fall over from exhaustion.  As we were announcing the rules for the final game, I realized that my foot was caught in the metal around the bottom of the chair.  It was really starting to hurt, so I kept trying to get it free without making a big deal about it. 

Famous, famous last words.

With one final jerk, I succeed not in getting my foot free but in actually falling out of the chair face first onto the stage.  Since my foot was still attached to said chair, it came with me and found a lovely resting place on top of my body, effectively pinning me to the stage.  I was, of course, holding a live mic at the time so this half-time entertainment show provided by yours truly included various sound effects.

Did I mention I was wearing pajamas when this happened?  Or that, you know, they ripped somewhere in The Great Fall?

Yeah.

But the real fun came a week later when I stopped by one of our local middle schools for a meeting with the principal.  Before the meeting got started, he asked if someone had fallen on stage at the event.  Figuring I could save myself a bit of embarrassment, I answered that someone had fallen but didn’t mention that it was me.  He began laughing and I asked how he had heard about it.

“Oh, I went into the cafeteria earlier this week and a bunch of girls were doing a reenactment of it for the other kids and teachers.  It was hilarious.  Did you all get it on tape by any chance?  I’d love to see the real deal.”

I kid not.