How My Wife Changed The Way I Look at Young Girls.

Tomorrow my wife, Cyndi Freeman, is performing her one woman show “I Was a Sixth Grade Bigfoot” at Under Saint Marks theater in New York. This is in preperation to do a run in Canada at the Edmonton Fringe next month. The show is about many things — truth, hoaxes, bullying, redemption, growing up, forgiveness, cryptozoology (my wife has an encyclopedic knowledge of the personalities and practices of professional Bigfoot hunters.) But one of the things it is about is her best friend when she was in grade school. It was her first great friendship and it’s end was her first great heartbreak. Listening to her describe that friendship, watching her relive those memories, both at home on the couch and when she is on stage, was eye opening for me about the friendships of young girls. When you see the show, you get to see someone transported back to the first time another person, someone outside themselves, was an inspiration to wonder and endless possibility. You also see the crash when that is inevitably and cruelly taken away and the long road to a beautiful and redemptive resolution. I won’t say anything more specific than that because you should come see the show. But, shortly after she premiered the show the first time, I found myself on the subway. At one stop, a crush of people got on including two girls who sat down across from me. I likely wouldn’t have noticed them, but that one had an awkward giggle that was just pitchy enough that it drew my attention. The two of them, maybe eleven or twelve, were huddled together, conspiring. They were gawky and self concious, living out the embarrassing reality that a pubescent growth spurt is a private thing that you are always doing in public. The way their eyes darted around the train, I could tell that they were talking about the other passengers, the way they would burst into spasmic laughter and the way they would cover that laughter with their hands made me think they were making up stories about the other passengers. I didn’t watch them for long, because old men shouldn’t watch young girls, but as I looked back at my phone I realized that, thanks to my wife and her stories, I had become aware of a whole world that I had never noticed before. These girls were contructing that world between themselves there on the train and that these moments, these acts of imagination, of constructing a reality out of the bond between them and the raw materials that provides, would shape and inform them the rest of their lives. This time would be fleeting and it would get swept away in the shifting currents of growing up, but it would never be unimportant.

Anyway, the story of my wife’s first best friend is just a part of this show tomorrow. I recently heard a theater critic say that he had been to too many solo shows that should have been titled, “I Was Right All Along.” I am happy to say, as a husband, collaborator, and an audience member that “I Was A Sixth Grade Bigfoot” is not that show. Certainly it is a show about surviving some very hard situations, but it is also a show about redemption and generosity. Most of all the show is about how the best way to hold on to one’s humanity, especially in tough times, is not to lose sight of anyone else’s.

The show is tomorrow night at 7 p.m. at Under St. Marks Theater (94 St. Marks Place. in New York, NY) Tickets are available here — https://www.vendini.com/ticket-software.html?e=cd1f7cb9d3bd4b45cb67a80039f1b0b0&t=tix

Also, it’s not a kid’s show, but there have been kids in past audiences who were really affected by it and some of them really related to it, they were going through similar stuff. So don’t be afraid to bring a kid if you have one.