I'm special... but you're not...

I was just reading about a recent study that revealed that college students are becoming more narcissistic than previous generations of college students. Apparently we’ve been pushing the “self-esteem” thing so much that we now have kids growing up to not only believe they are worth something, but to also believe they are the center of the universe. And for some reason, I think this is funny. I guess there’s a fine line between “self-esteem” and “self-centeredness.”

The article reminded me of my acting debut in high school. I portrayed the part of “human scenery” in our production of “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.” Actually, the official description of my part was “townsperson.” My friend Ali was a townsperson, too. And we refused to simply be the “human scenery” we were meant to be. Every time we were on stage together, we would have some sort of pantomime worked out to make our appearance more interesting. We worked especially hard on one of the scenes in the middle of the musical. There’s a scene where the entire cast is onstage, supposedly at a big town get-together. And as with all musicals, there was a big production number with lots of dancing and plenty of solos for the main characters. However, the townspeople did get a nifty little dance routine, and, if I remember correctly, this was the scene where Ali and I had our own little ten-second dance in the spotlight, where she sort of lifted me and tossed me over to the side… hmmm… is it weird that the director gave us two girls our own dance number? Well, Ali WAS pretty tall…

But after our moment in the spotlight, we were supposed to retreat to the shadows of the background, where we’d join the rest of the human scenery in claps and smiles and other non-distracting behavior. We didn’t want to detract from the main characters. But we didn’t exactly want to fade into the background, either. So Ali and I got together with a couple other girls, and we created our own “background story.” We had a whole story made up for our non-existent characters, and a whole pantomime of their night at the town get-together. We even threw in an argument at one point – while the main characters were hogging the spotlight, the four of us in the background were acting out a fake disagreement, which, at the right spot in the progression of the musical number, we’d resolve with hugs and smiles. At one point, the four of us climbed up to sit on a wooden table at the back of the “town square” set, and proceeded to launch into our very own sit-down choreography. We were especially proud of that one – we’d made the whole thing up on our own, it fit into the music perfectly, and the director never told us to stop… so he either never noticed, or he thought what we were doing actually belonged there.

Our one obstacle on the way to being independent background actors was one of our classmates named Annika. Annika had been named “stage manager” by our school’s drama teacher and director, Mr. Ruf. That mostly meant she was supposed to keep track of the props. But Annika decided it meant that she was in charge of everything that happened on that stage. If you wanted to set foot on the stage, you’d better have Annika’s permission first. If you wanted to ad lib in the background, Annika better not notice, otherwise she’d have choice words for you. And when she saw someone behaving in a way she disapproved of, Annika would always say the same thing: “you think you’re SO special! Well you’re not!”

“You think you’re SO special” became a sort of catch-phrase amongst us lowly townspeople. As Annika patrolled the stage with her hands on her hips and her eyes ablaze with anger, we began to think SHE was the one who thought she was SO special. Annika, after all, had scored one of the leads – apparently sealing her “specialness” quite securely. And the way it seemed to the rest of us, no one else was allowed to be as special as Annika. After a while, we learned to just ignore her – the only “power” she could legitimately wield was over the props.

And so, on opening night, I was wearing a costume and the first face-full of makeup I’d ever worn in my life (Ali said I looked like a “French temptress”… I think it was supposed to be a compliment, but I was only fifteen… and Ali read a lot of romance novels…). And when the curtain rose on that town square scene, our townsperson pantomime was perfectly executed. We were so proud of ourselves. And why not? We were, after all, SO special…