Day 4: Write On, Mamas! Blog-Off

I haven’t sent that email to you yet. The one that says, “Hey! You know how you always ‘like’ my blog posts when I share them on Facebook? And know how you’re always all, ‘You should write a book!’ Well, now I am! I’m writing it with my friends, the Write On, Mamas! and we’ve started an Indiegogo campaign and I know you’re just dying to be a part of it. Thank you so much! Here’s the link to donate!”

I haven’t sent that email yet. But I will. Soon. And when I do, I’ll “sweeten the deal” by promising that if you contribute to our campaign, I will dedicate one of my “Blog Off” posts to you and I’ll write something sweet about you that will make you say, “Ah! That was $75 well spent.”

So if you see a post about someone we went to high school with or carpooled with to ballet or did shots of tequila with, you’ll know that person is a generous soul.

Today’s Generous Soul Post goes out to Andrea Torres. Because even though I haven’t sent the email out yet, Andrea saw one of the blog posts, clicked on the link and donated dough.

Andrea and I wrote Reader’s Theatre scripts in middle school for speech competitions. Reader’s Theatre is script that is acted out but not memorized or staged. We always took 1^st place when our group competed, partly because everyone else was doing something boring, like “Our Town” and we wrote our own material. It also helped that we were all fluent in English and often the competition wasn’t.

We started with real Dear Abby columns that we put together in a script. Then we started writing our own fake problems and advice. One of our fake columns was “written” by Maria Conchita Consuela Juanita (like our version of Rosanna Rosanna Danna). She spoke with a thick Mexican accent and kept wanting more toilet paper. Juanita always got a big laugh.

Then Andrea and I took the full leap into fiction and started writing Reader’s Theatre scripts from scratch.

We wrote a take-off soap operas—“General Store” (Instead of “General Hospital,” get it?!) Andrea and I were addicted to “All My Children” which at lunch on the television set that doubled as a computer monitor.

“General Store” featured a hen-pecked husband/store owner, his evil scheming wife, some lovers and ex-cons, a few birds and monkeys (because Andrea had a whole repertoire of bird calls), and of course, Maria Conchita Consuela Juanita. If memory serves, Juanita was still in search of more toilet paper. Each time we performed it, we incorporated new scenes and embellished our animal sounds taking a special pleasure in startling kids during the final jungle scene.

Thanks for donating, Andrea! Do you have any of those scripts hanging around? If I do, I have no idea where they are.