After the Music Died

I wrote about our "Sweet Escape" performance because the boys' birthdays are coming up soon, so the memory of last year has come back to the forefront of my mind. Like I said, it's one of my favorite memories--but it gets better. Here's what happened after we finished our song:

We'd decided beforehand that as soon as the song ended, we should exit and run back to our apartment so we didn't have to go through that awkward, post-performance, "Hey...good job....Oh, thanks...." conversation. We'd left our shoes outside the boys' door, so we had to grab them before we could run away. When Betty Lemon bent down to get her shoes, she BANGED her head on the stair railing with the loudest clang you could possibly imagine. I witnessed the whole thing and saw her basically bounce off and then stand there stunned. I'm surprised I didn't see birds flying around her head, tweeting.

I, on the other hand, was trying not to pass out from nerves and the fact that I'd just been singing and dancing and probably not breathing much. Because of this, I wasn't thinking too straight and kept telling Betty Lemon, "Come on, hurry! We've gotta go!" So she dutifully got her shoes on somehow and staggered back to our apartment.

This memory makes me laugh harder than anything I can think of. She hit her head SO HARD on that rail that it's just ridiculous. I'm surprised she didn't crack her skull. She told me later that she thought no one must've heard what happened, but I assured her that everyone in the city probably heard that clang. And yet, she held it together well enough to run down some stairs and across the courtyard, all without complaint. She is an amazing person.