Fearfully and Wonderfully Made Chapter 8 - The boy in the box

The summer after I graduated was spent “putting away childish things” as the saying goes. I moved out of my parent’s home and into a small apartment, and had a couple of other big moments as well. The first was my baptism at my church. Despite my struggles with my gender, I sincerely believed (and in fact I still believe) in my faith, and so getting baptized was a pretty big deal for me. Plus, because my church wouldn't baptize “children “ which they considered anyone not an adult, it was in a lot of ways my official ceremony into adulthood.

The other thing I did that summer was less of a success, however.

I attempted to get a job as a performer at an amusement park outside of Calgary, using as my audition piece a dance set to the song “Fat” by Weird Al Yankovick.

I didn’t just bomb, I nuked.

I was bad. I mean, really, really, really bad.

The best thing you could say about the experience is that it cured me of any idea of a life as an actor.

So I tried to find the next best thing, and applied to a local college for a course in Radio and Television Arts, which was to train me in the technical stuff that goes on behind the scenes.

Looking at the course now, I wonder how the others who took the class fared in the field, especially with the changes in technology.
Let me give you an example. They had us purchase a couple of singles on vinyl to learn how to switch between records. I bought “People are People” by Depeche Mode and “Boy in the Box” by Corey Hart.

Considering how vinyl was already being replaced with cassettes, and then cassettes were replaced with compact disks, and then all of the above has been replaced with downloads, I can only imagine how hard it would have been to keep up.

But that isnt a problem I have to deal with, as I failed miserably in the course.

And so, less than six months after the high of applause at my graduation, I was as low as I could go.

Or so I thought ...

I wasn’t the only one in my family going through some serious changes that year.

My mother finally reached her breaking point, and left my stepfather, fleeing Calgary in the process and establishing herself in Edmonton.

The reason why she picked Edmonton is that my brother had gone there some time earlier, but as it turned out he kept a reason to keep coming down to Calgary anyway, as he had started dating a young woman who I had gone to school with. As things turned out, he’s still with her today ...

As for me, once I had grieved for a while over my failure, I applied to the University of Alberta in Edmonton for the Education program. I figured if I couldn’t do, maybe I could teach ...

But even worse things were to come ...

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