I should preface this particular post with the following disclaimers: Number one, Steve is most definitely going to ridicule me for this post; he might not comment on the post, but he will most certainly rub his temples and/or shake his head disapprovingly if he ever reads this. Number two, this is the first summer I've ever really... how do you say... lived; for the first seventeen years of my life I didn't do much of anything during the summer, and that is why my favorite summer memory is going to be a rather recent occurrence. Number three, I actually need to preface this memory with a (hopefully) brief story... Here's the story:

During the Spring Semester at Rutgers: New Brunswick, the Cabaret Theater on Douglass Campus put on a production of Godspell which I was fortunate enough to be a minor ensemble part in. I say "fortunate" because I was able to see first-hand how much of a family the main cast of Godspell was like; to this day, they refer to each other as "the Godspell Family" and, in all honesty, their unity was something i thought to be so beautiful I could only one day hope to experience it myself.

Now then, I told you that so this memory would make more sense. This summer, the South Plainfield Summer Drama Workshop (SPSDW) put on a production of Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens's Seussical The Musical in which I was the Cat in the Hat. Coincidentally, this was also the last year I would be eligible to act with the SPSDW. Throughout late June and all of July, there were many wonderful moments, but the cast (which was at least two or three times larger than the cast of Godspell) hadn't quite achieved that "family" status. Then, during the Sunday Matinee performance of the show, my dear friend Rocco (who played Horton the Elephant) was selected to say "The Prayer" (which is the short prayer the "last year" person (or people depending on the night and how many last-year people there are) recites line-by-line as the cast repeats) on the stage itself (no cast had recited the prayer on the stage for at least a decade). Before reciting the prayer, though, Rocco had a few words to say to the cast; Rocco, in essence, thanked the cast of Seussical for making this production one of the best theater productions he had ever been a part of (just as I had done opening night of the show).

After that, though, Rocco went one step further than I had opening night; Rocco broke tradition. Rocco decided that we all should say "The Prayer" in unision. Almost everyone was puzzled as to why (myself included), and Rocco simply stated the following: "I wanna do this differently and recite the prayer together because we as a cast are different than any other cast I've been a part of. We're not just a cast; we're a family." At that moment, I realized that I would be able to refer to my cast mates as my "Seussical Family" and I felt deeply blessed by this occurrence... As corny as it may sound, in that moment, standing on the stage with the rest of my Seussical Family, I had found my Solla Sollew... And I will never forget that moment as long as I live on the stage.