Every day as a senior, you have to face that anything you do will be the last time you do it here. For instance, I once heard of a student who counted every school day their senior year, and announced frequently that “today is my last 151st day of school”. I don’t really go that far, but I am enjoying the facts that I am currently writing my last term paper for Mrs. Smith, that we’re working on our last chapter of Dual Trig (I thought it would never happen.), and that the last test for Dual Government is coming up.

But some things, I just don’t want to try and enjoy the last of. To be totally specific, it is hard for me to have a lot of fun with the last time I have the honor of performing with One-Act Play, and our Theatre. It’s hard to smile when realizing that I won’t have my hair teased out to the width of my shoulders by Morse again. It isn’t fun to clean out the girls’ dressing room one last time. Okay, so maybe having my hair teased and cleaning aren’t exactly fun, but you get my point, right? No?

Okay. These things are things that I love. I love it all, every little bit of it. I love having my hair done by Morse- even though it hurts a bit, and if I lose my balance he could easily pick me up by my hair and a brush on accident- because of how excited he gets when the hair starts looking just like he wants it. And I love cleaning out the dressing room after a show because of the general chaos of getting everything organized.

Actually, that’s what I love the most about Theatre here. Even in our craziest shows, with the coolest sets and most ridiculous costumes, make up, and hair, there is a system. Like Morse spouts about a million times a season, “there’s a method to the madness”.

So to say good-bye to the madness that has been my first and last One-Act Play, has not been easy. For one thing, I feel like it just barely began. I honestly feel like it was only a week ago that I was memorizing monologues for the audition, the cast list was released, and I was set as an acting alternate. Only a few minutes after that, I was asked to look over the lines for the teacher Mrs. Holly. I blinked my eyes and we were preparing for District competition, with me on stage. We advanced past District with glowing critiques from the judge, and only had a few days to prepare for Area. We spent the night between our two days of Area at Possum Kingdom Lake bonding, rehearsing, and getting into other shenanigans like that. We performed at Area and- didn’t advance.

I know, it hurt. I won’t get into my artistic differences with the judge, and I’m not going to bash the two groups who did advance- Hillsboro performing “Mother Courage and Her Children” and Mineral Wells performing the “Beggar’s Opera”. All I will say is that the judge and I will probably never play cards together, and I may or may not have wished for a moment that the casts of Mother Courage and Beggar’s Opera would have gotten sick so they would have to perform with sore throats. Oh, I kid.
Now? Well, we just had our- barring special requests- last performance. This marks my last performance with Decatur High School Theatre. I don’t know what to say about that. All I can think of is this- do not cry because it is over; smile because it happened.