The Mime

 "I joined you in the mime," said Ally on the second day of school.

  "What?" I said, grabbing her by the shoulders, "You're kidding, right?"

  "Nope," she said proudly, "I joined you in the mime for Environment Day. There's practice in the last period."

  I shook her real hard. 

  That was how I joined the school mime. On the second day of school, my top priority was to get through the day as normally as a newbie eighth grader could. Here in India, you're officially a high schooler. And Ally joined me in the skit without my permission, may I add.

For the skit, I was meant to be a pond. A.K.A I'm supposed to hold hands with five other girls and sit in a circle, thus a pond. But I thought that was better than Ally. She was an elephant. Haha! I mean, she's tall and all, but she's as skinny as a toothpick. And last time I checked, elephants weren't toothpicks.

Just as I thought. Nice and round.

Never mind. I found one. Dang, maybe we should give it some food.*

 

After that, I had to jog by the sea (which was another bunch of girls) and pretend it was really stinky. There were a few deer that drank from the pond and died. Then, this kid I'll call Bozo who acts as a tiger, will (pretend) to eat the deer and will die of food poisoning. You know that sad violin song people use for memes? Well, guess which song comes after Bozo (pretends) to die? 100 points for the first five guessers!

One really cool part was when multiple kids became an entire garbage truck and put on kid on top of them. Now, on the garbage truck, there were multiple garbage bags that the rider had to throw in the pond, narrowly missing our heads. We are sitting cross-legged with our foreheads touching the floor!

Ally never mentioned head trauma when she signed me up! But we were all fine, so no need to worry (or laugh).

In the next scene, which was the sea, the girls had to sit in pairs of two, with four rows, mimicking waves with their hands. There was a racecar that had to throw a garbage bag into the sea. I wasn't sure if the car the two boys were playing was a racecar exactly, but blame that on the audio. Bozo was the driver of the boy/racecar and I wasn't sure if he had vendetta against one of the wave girls (Glenice) but he aimed straight for her face for the trash bag throwing. There were only two days for practice (thanks a bunch, Ally), and soon came the eve of Environment Day.

I had to where all black for the mime, and I found myself a decent pair of black jeans, but I realised that I didn't have a plain black shirt. I was panicking, and I got my sister and father to panic for me too. But I found a black shirt that belonged to my mother. It was slightly too big for me, but it worked. 

I felt cool wearing anti-school uniform. We first had a small practice at the Quadrangle and went to the oil painting room for the face paint. The coordinating teacher was Smitha Miss, and she was barking orders everywhere. It was funny watching her berade Bozo. 

We painted our faces with acrylics, which was really uncomfortable. It was cold and stiff, but for the sake of the mime, we did it. Ally was whining the entire time about getting face painted, which I found was really contradictory. After that, the girls laughed their hearts out as Smitha Miss made the boys wear lipstick. The first performance was for sixth to eighth-graders. Some kids saw our faces from the backstage and made weird faces. It was fair. The acrylic was sloppily painted, and we didn't have any black eye paint.

We played the skit, and guess what? Everybody laughed when Bozo died. What a shocker. Other than the fact, Bozo made up for it by hitting Glenice square in the nose with a trash bag, the skit went smoothly. After the performance, we hurried ourselves to the oil painting room to peel the stupid acrylic off.

I helped Ally peel off a chunk of paint from her cheeks, and she barely scratched the paint from my forehead when the boys rushed in. 

"What the heck are you guys doing?" they yelled, "We've got to perform for the first to fifth graders next!" We, girls,  all stood there, frozen. Cue complete panic! Paint brushes flew as my friends and I tried to repaint the peeled off paint. I only had a bit on my forehead to repaint. Half of Ally's face was bare. She whimpered as Glenice helped her slather cold paint all over her face. A few kids had removed it completely! So it took jars of white acrylic and crusty paint brushes for us to look nearly as decent as before. 

We hurried downstairs and, after getting a quick scolding from Smitha Miss, we sat behind the stage, whining about the second layer of paint. Slowly the elementary kids wobbled in. They came from backstage so they all caught a glimpse of us before entering the auditorium. Bozo and the boys were having fun scaring them as the little girls waved to the eighth grader girls they knew. One particularly excited girl was waving at everyone. And Ally kindly waved back. There was pure joy in the little kid's face as she said, "Hi Aunty!"

The colour drained from Ally's face as I burst out laughing, clutching my stomach and patting Ally's back. She crossed her arms and grumped. "Oh, don't look so grouchy," I said, in between my giggles. "Aunty dear," I added. I also met Tia and Anne's little brother backstage, and I waved. He looked absolutely horrified. I think I accidentally traumatised him.

We performed and as expected, the kids laughed when Bozo died. But I expect it's less about the meme and more about the fact that he was traumatising the kids backstage. "Karma" I bet they thought. After that, we took a photo and hurried upstairs to get changed. We felt mortified walking through the hallways as sloppily painted as we were. We managed to get the paint off my face with soap and water, and we changed back to the school uniform. Though there were still bit and flecks of paint stuck in my hair that I was only able to remove at home with a nice, warm shower.

FROM YOUR EXTREMELY TIRED MIME

N.M SIRIUS