Run, Katie, Run!

Well. There are less than two weeks until I move to Cedar Falls to start band camp up at UNI. That's pretty exciting. Yeah. That's right. I'm excited. I can't believe how many opportunities await me in the next couple of years. I'M GOING TO COLLEGE. I'M GOING TO COLLEGE! I'M GOING TO COLLEGE!!!!

Voice from outside: "Your Mom goes to College."

Shut up.

The point is that I'm happy. We met a family from Iowa here and we got to talking. Justin is a saxophone performance major at the University of Iowa, and we were geekin out together, gushing about our professors and our favorite pieces; complaining about the necessary practice time, and the inevitable lack of practice over the summer. So now I'm SUPER PUMPED to be a music major. It's just kind of my thing. I can't wait to go someplace where I fit in. Not to mention that I have a lovely wife/room-mate waiting for me when I get there.

Anyway. Justin and his girlfriend, Oakley, are really fun. We bonded over apples to apples and monopoly. They kind of have the same creepy sense of humor that we do. Go Iowans. Meeting people that we get along with definitely makes spending a week in Branson, Missouri more enjoyable. Not that it lacked excitement before. I'm here with a group of close friends. It's me, Brenna, Krista, and Kassie. Unfortunately, we had to leave Alyssa behind on this one. She's getting her wisdom teeth out. Anyway. We've been friends since middle school, and this is our last hurrah before we all head off to wherever. Also, I think it's the first time I've ever spent this much time with this particular group of people. I mean, we always hang out, but here we're cooped up in a little cottage together where we hang out 24/7. With this much estrogen, we could be going crazy, but we're all loving it. I'm so lucky to have such great friends. I'll miss them so much. Last night we watched How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. What a great movie, eh? And every time we get in the car we put in the Jersey Boys soundtrack. So now we always have the Four Seasons in our heads. That gets...loud. Achlja;dhf;oas. I love my friends.

What was I going to say? The shows we've seen so far: The Hughes Brothers (a musical family of four brothers and four hundred children. They're from Utah. I think that explains it.), Kirby Something (The prince of magic. He won a Merlin Award for making a Helicopter appear out of thin air. He won my heart with his smile and his sarcasm), Shoji Tabuchi (a fiddle player. With a chorus of singers and dancers. Um. They did glee covers. And there was this one guy with curly brown hair who danced with so much energy, thusly stealing the show), and then today we saw Six, an a group of six brothers who perform all styles of music using nothing but their voices. They were so talented. My own voice is raw from screaming so much at their show. Honestly. I almost crapped my pants about twelve times. Especially when they did their homage to the four seasons. And.....I don't know. Not even words. No words. Just trust me. They were awesome.

Branson is weird. Everyone is either a senior citizen, or a small grandchild. You drive down the street and when you look from side to side you see nothing but theatre after theatre after theatre, most of them filled with musical families covering country hits. What? And you go to a show at 2:00 in the afternoon. The theatre is half filled with old people. And the performers come out, doing the same thing that they've done for the past twenty-six years. Branson, Missouri. How does one end up performing in Branson, Missouri? I always thought of it as a stepping stone in the showbiz hierarchy. But I don't know. A Branson show is kind of a genre of it's own. How would I feel if my only audience was a half-filled theatre of old people in Branson, Missouri?

I would feel fabulous.

You know why? Because performing is the greatest feeling in the whole wide world. If anyone is lucky enough to do that and get paid for it, then it doesn't matter where they live, and who their audience is, as long as the music makes people happy. The old people sure are happy. They've had long lives filled with God knows what, and now they're enjoying a happy retirement by watching a japanese fiddle player who can make them feel like a child again. Branson is about never growing up. The performers get to goof off onstage wearing sparkly jackets with their siblings. When balloons fall from the ceiling of the theatre, senior citizens bat them around the way I used to at my birthday parties. Um. Maybe I still do.

I think that's what life is about. Finding that place where you never have to grow up. Wherever you are, whatever you end up doing as a career...if you never grow up. You win.

I'm gonna get off the computer now.