Alexis Stars in the Musical Grease

Alexis as a little girl. Her hair was curly and wild at this time.

I had not used this picture before because it could not be copied as a picture so I had to copy the whole page and go to Paint and crop this picture. It is also on the home page of her blog. I have already mentioned that she is super genius and that she is 22 and in her third year of medical school. Her father is a medical doctor and her mother has a few PhD degrees. She may get a PhD in music like her mother when she finishes medical school. Her mother has a PhD in psychology and teaching.

She also gets 100s on her exams. She also plays a few musical instruments. Also she sings and dances in plays. The woman that was going to star in Grease had to drop out and they no longer have understudies. "In theater, an understudy, referred to in opera as cover or covering, is a performer who learns the lines and blocking or choreography of a regular actor or actress in a play. Should the regular actor or actress be unable to appear on stage because of illness, emergencies or death, the understudy takes over the part."

So the dean of the medical school knew that Alexis could learn parts very quickly so he got Alexis to do it. She did not have the time but it is great having the dean of a medical school owing you a big favor. Now there are many things that went on and you can read her own words on them but I have something to emphasize.

Being a super genius she rarely needs advice from anyone. On this post she follows my advice! You can see the previous post and the following post to get a more complete view of this fascinating story. She is a great writer and has written many posts in her blog since age 15. Here is the part where she mentions me. During this story is another story of her uncle buying her a violin.

The end is in sight. I have three more performances, including one tonight. I have been told that the saxes will not play on a particular one of my solos. I will follow Chuck's advice. I'll tell the director to tell the orchestra conductor that if the saxes play, I will wait for them to stop before I begin singing, and if they start playing after I begin singing, I'll stop and kill time by bantering with the audience. I would tell this to the conductor myself except that he would never listen to me, and my words would fall on deaf ears.

This Cannot Go on Forever, and It Won't

Here is a picture of Alexis with her new violin. She wrote the following under it. This is the picture my Uncle Jerry took that he thinks he's going to sell a stock photo or something  similar and have it plastered all over the  web,  He had to take the shot from the back because I have a bruise on my cheek from a change-of-scenes accident and didn't have any of the sort of makeup that practically covers corpses'  defects. My standard lightweight cosmetics didn't make a dent in the discoloration.

I don't see what is so great about the picture, anyway. To me, it's reminiscent of Lunette, a clown on an old children's TV program, The Big Comfy Couch. The sofa was made extra large in order to make Lunette  appear as  small as a child. At least there was a purpose for that. It was a TV show. Here we're not filming a TV show. The extra large bench only serves  to make me look ridiculously small and thin. I guarantee that I am not anorexic nor am I proud of my overly thin body dimensions in this photo. I'm merely overworked and undernourished. The professional photographer used angles well  to make me look much healthier in the photo shoot yesterday.

I have more to write but this place is a good place to stop for now. I feel that this picture is beautiful and magical. Here is what she wrote on the next post about this part of the story that I gave the advice on.

At the introduction to one of my songs, "Hopelessly Devoted to You" [not my favorite song by any stretch even before the saxes ruined it for me] the saxes began to wail away even though they had been told not to play at all on the song. I'm moderately certain that they were not overtly defying the director, but were instead following the orders of the "orchestra" conductor.

This time I was prepared. I had a basket hidden just off-stage on the side on which I was situated. In were yarn and knitting needles. I was to sit on a stool as I sang this song. When the saxes stared with their cacophony [a harsh, discordant mixture of sounds], I called to another actor to bring out my basket. I sat there on the stool smiling and doing the best imitation of knitting I could come up with (I know the very rudimentary basics, as in "knit one, pearl two," or that sort of thing, but if what I knitted had to actually look like anything, I'd be up a creek).

I commented on how it was going to be a nice sweater for Danny. When the Kenickie character walked onto the stage, I pulled all the yard out of the basket and held it up to his back as though I was fitting the sweater for someone, which looked rather stupid since it was 95% loose yarn. Then I had him hold his hands out while I would the yearn around them.

I am back to add more to this post. Here an interesting thing that happened to me in high school all year. Not only does I want Alexis to read it, but it should be on the internet to read. I will call it The French Teacher. I had a very attractive French teacher that was voted the most attractive teacher of the school. I had her for the sophomore year. Nothing interesting happened.

Then I had her for the junior year. I guess there was something she liked about me. I guess she could tell that I was attracted to her. She was married and I was age 16. This was the age of consent in Pennsylvania which means that I was considered an adult as far as matters of the heart.

There was desk in the front for her. Sometimes she would sit on the desk and teach. She never taught sitting behind her desk. She would wear a nice dress and heels or sexy boots. There was an aisle down the middle and I has the seat on the aisle in front. So did someone else but they were on the teacher's left side. So she tried it and decided the best place to teach class sitting on my desk! She never sat on anyone else's desk.

Now the desk was not separate from the chair like her desk. The desk was part of the chair and she could not sit on it unless someone was sitting in the chair. So we both liked this. It was like she was sitting on my lap. It did not take long before I took advantage of this. I would put my books about 3 inches from her hips and derriere. Then I would hold my books, there is nothing wrong with this, with my arm. It would fit in right between the book and her hips, touching both.

So we liked this arrangement. Then when the class was over I would go back to my locker and smell my arm. It had a strong smell of teacher's perfume on it.

The teachers at my high school were not ordinary teachers since it was not an ordinary high school. It was Central High School that is magnet school for Philadelphia that is and was the 5th largest city in the country. It had only the smartest kids from the Philadelphia area. It always won the national chess championship from across the country. It had the largest high school library in the country with some old and rare books.

Philadelphia was the home of Benjamin Franklin and where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed. The first president of this high school was the great grandson of Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Dallas Bache, who was professor of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. Harvard is the first college of the country but University of PA became the first university of the country when it created the first medical school. A university has more than one school.

Now for the rest, I will give you a website since I not expect you to believe me. Central High School (Philadelphia). It says:

Central, the second-oldest continuously public high school in the United States (if one considers schools that were initially private, it is the twenty-seventh oldest public high school), was founded in 1836 and is a four-year university preparatory magnet school.

Central High School holds the distinction of being the only high school in the United States that has the authority, granted by an Act of Assembly in 1849, to confer academic degrees upon its graduates.[5] This practice is still in effect, and graduates who meet the requirements are granted the Bachelor of Arts degree. Central also confers high school diplomas upon graduates who do not meet the requirement for a bachelor's degree.

Due to its authority to grant academic degrees, Central traditionally refers to the principal of the school as the "President" of Central High School. The current president is Timothy J. McKenna.

At the end of the school year, I had a decision to make. She told me that I could go into advanced placement French for the senior year and have a better teacher, if I want. I already was in AP science and AP math. I said that I get an A in French but in AP French I will probably only get a B. She said that a B in AP French is much better than an A in regular French.

So I chose to go into AP French than to stay with her. But now when I look back on it, I should have stayed in her class. As far as a teacher telling that I like them, something happened in middle school or junior high. I was in class and a teacher of the same subject came into the class to get something.

This teacher was very young and small and I liked her, seeing her for the first time. So I watched her the whole time she was in the class which was only like 2 minutes. When she was leaving, she came over to my desk and put her hand on mine. The boy sitting next to me got very angry like she was doing something that was improper. I told him it was okay. I guess they call this wearing your emotions on your sleeve.