On a Friday night when Husband has been out of town all week, I like to treat the boys and myself to a pajama party with pizza and a movie. It’s always a struggle to get a children’s movie that I find palatable, so sometimes I change it up and get a grown-up movie that I think they might like. Musicals have been the most reliable resource. Right now, The Music Man is a big hit with the boys. I haven’t seen it for years, and I remembered it as kind of dull, but it has every element a small boy could ask for: Steam train! Small children dancing and singing! Marching bands! I had forgotten how terrifically syncopated most of the music is, too.

I also rented High School Musical, the better to understand what music those crazy kids are listening to these days. The movie wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected. The plot involves a basketball player who breaks out of his social circle to audition for the lead in the high school musical and then falls in love with his leading lady. It took me some time to realize that this plot had been ripped from the annals of my own high school experience.

When I was in ninth grade, the “freshmen” were housed in the junior high school; high school was grades 10 - 12 only. (This seems to be the earliest in a series of American educational experiments to reconfigure schools to keep the younger kids away from the pernicious influence of the older ones.) The ninth graders were allowed to try out for some sports and for the high school musical. That year, it was Bye Bye Birdie. The ‘fifties were all the rage in the ’seventies; we just loved wearing saddle shoes and poodle skirts and pretending to live in a time with more formal social rules.

The director of the musical had taken pains to recruit some real live boys (not drama geeks) to fill the three male lead roles. This was terribly exciting. The drama geeks were perfectly nice guys, but it was thrilling to meet older boys we would typically be terrified to talk to. Also, having males who were known outside of theater circles associated with our musical gave it a real legitimacy.

Hugo was played by a funny curly-haired boy. The only thing I remember about him is that he was one of four brothers; one brother was named Paul Newman and was a running back on the football team. The lead, Al (the Dick Van Dyke role in the movie) was played by a senior boy, one of those kids who got good grades, was involved in every sort of activity, and was a friend to everyone. His girlfriend, who was part of the chorus, had just broken up with him, and he was a tragic figure to us freshman. He went into a funk every time the song “Crazy Love” played on the radio.

The pièce de casting résistance, though, was Conrad. The director found this tall, dark, sweet-but-dumb tough guy who had probably never participated in an extracurricular activity in his life. He looked like a young John Travolta (back then, John Travolta still was a young John Travolta), and he was terrified of making a fool of himself. His girlfriend had been enlisted to accompany him to rehearsals to make sure he didn’t run away, but his head was soon turned by the screams of delight accompanying him from the chorus as he sang “One Last Kiss,” not all of which were put on. He was an absolutely perfect Conrad Birdie.

Like the girl in A Chorus Line, I could never really sing, so I was lucky to get the part of Sad Girl #1, who (silently) dances with Al to “Put on a Happy Face.” My best friend, another ninth grader, walked away with Rosie, the female lead. This was a shocker to the high school population. Ninth graders were supposed to be chorus and stage hands. She was the most qualified for the role, though, and eventually she earned the respect of the company.

Over the weeks of rehearsal, Rosie slowly fell in love with Al, who was still pining over his chorus girl. My best friend and I discussed this state of affairs for about two hours a day in telephone calls after rehearsals. Would Al ever be able to tear himself away from his ex’s memory? Even if he could, would a senior date (gasp) a freshman? We were soon prevailing upon Al to run us back and forth to MacDonald’s for the dinner break in his little green Bug. This alone was enough excitement to fuel my diary for weeks on end, but I was also suffering unrequited love vicariously through my friend. The rehearsal where Rosie and Al practiced their kissing scene was closed to everyone but them, the director, and me. He had already dropped me off after the cast party when he drove her home and kissed her for the first time “out of character,” but I still know every detail so well that I might as well have been in the back seat.

How sad. My first big role in a High School Romance, and I played not the ingenue, but the sidekick.