If… (Week 6)

This is week six in my personal “If… Project” in which I answer questions from the book “If… (Questions for the Game of Life)”

There are 125 pages of this book, each with four questions. I plan to take one page each week and answer the questions as thoroughly and honestly as I am able. In addition, I invite you to answer the questions along with me, whether it be in the comments section, your own personal blog, or just within your own thoughts.

Perhaps in doing so, we will get to know each other better, but even more importantly, get to know ourselves better.

This week’s questions:

If you could have permanent possession of any single object in the world, what would you want it to be?

The objects that I tend to covet are technology-based objects. The iPhone. The MacBook. The newest Digital Camera. A cool new camcorder. A large screen flat panel television. And such advances in technology are always being made, so if I had permanent possession of one of them, it would only be about a year or two until something newer and better will catch my eye and I won’t even want the first one anymore, nor would anyone else out there be jealous of my possession of it, because they’ll have something else which has now become far better. So I am going to choose an object that I’m not even sure really exists: a Lifetime Pass to all current (and future) Disney theme parks. Now THAT’s something I would cherish and would save me a lot of money. A LOT of money.

If you could have had the starring role in one film already made, which movie would you pick?

If I wanted to be clever I would be something that went on to spawn several sequels, thus assuring me a role in several subsequent movies. You know, something like Harry Potter or or Frodo Baggins. But I’m going to go with movies that I would actually want to be in instead, and since I can’t pick just one, I’m picking three. Sue me.

First off would be Home Alone. Yeah, this one would have spawned me a sequel also, but that’s not why I am picking it. This movie came out when I was about nine or ten, and at the point in my life where I had decided that I really really really wanted to be a movie star. So, I kinda latched on to every Macaulay Culkin at the time. He was the epitome of who I wanted to be, and Home Alone was the holy grail of movies.

Second choice is Mary Poppins. I have loved musicals since I was a zygote, and movie musicals were my first introduction to them. This one combined my love of musicals with the magic of Disney, and I wanted to be Michael Banks so badly growing up. I remember learning all of his lines and lyrics by watching the movie repeatedly and would act his scenes out in my bedroom pretending that I was filming the movie. And this was during the period of time before I fully understood that the magic of special effects wasn’t necessarily really magic. I thought they really were riding on runaway carousel horses and floating on the ceiling and those would have been a dream come true to take part in.

Third choice would be Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. I kind of fell in love with the thought of being in this movie because it was one of the first (the first, perhaps) movie I remember seeing where there was a kid named Nick in it, and he was roughly my same age. So why couldn’t I play him?! It was just so unfair! This one also looked like it was just a lot of fun to film. You got be dirty and messy the whole time. You got to swing on a giant broom. You got to fly through the air on a giant bumblebee. It was like a giant jungle gym with rides, in my imagination. The only thing that freaked me out about the idea of filming it was that scene with the larger-than-life scorpion attack. Always gave me the heebie-jeebies.

Now that I’m going through the list of movies I want(ed) to be in, I’m coming up with tons more. But since I’ve already picked two more than the question allows, I’ll stop for now.

If you could return for one year to one age in your life, knowing what you know now, to relive that year as you wish, which year would you go back to?

I would go back to 2001, I think. That was the year when I was offered an incredible job performing with a national tour of a musical, and for reasons that are too convoluted to get into right now, ended up not accepting the job. I often wonder what would have happened and how my life/career would be different now had I taken that job and continued in the business. Because that is also the point in life where I virtually gave up and stopped trying, because the experience caused me a lot of depression and caused me to get very disillusioned with the whole thing. Knowing what I know now, I think it would have been a better choice for me to have taken that job and continued down that path. I probably would be a much more fulfilled person now.

If you had to identically repeat any single year of your life to date, without changing a thing, which year would you relive?

Oh goodness, none! Good years have happened, but each of those good years also had its share of bad experiences. And honestly, I’m not sure I can see the benefit of living a year over again if you’re not given the option of changing the way you lived it (like in the previous question). I think dwelling on the past is a lot of what holds us back in life, and this seems to be an example of that. For the sake of the game, I’ll pick something though. I’ll pick the year I was in first grade. I had tons of friends. It was before any gay bashing starting. I loved school. And it was just overall a very happy time from what I can remember. And I was adorable. For reals.

Those are my answers for this week’s questions. What are yours?