Ramble with Storm: Perambulation on wry (hold the overwrought)

Mulling things on my morning ramble with Storm, the family’s mixed Lab.

My daughter had the official opening night for the play she is in last night and it was a big deal, at least for us.

The last month has been an insane juggling act by my daughter, my wife and myself to fit in all the practices and related gatherings. Let’s just say lots of crockpot meals eaten late at night.

On Thursday, the opening day for the early performances before hundreds of school kids, I helped with kid patrol and guarding the boys room.

Being around all those theater types–and I am talking the kids, parents, play directors and staff–took me back some 30-plus years to college.

Theater majors ran in their little pack and English majors ran in our little pack. Neither little pack fit well into the mainstream of economic, science and business majors.

Yet, there was little overlap between the two little odd packs, both sort of cults off the college mainstream. English majors relish wry. Theater majors build performance on overwrought.

One is subtle, trending toward the internal; the other is overt and out there.

One of the reasons I make Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion” a must-listen, no matter where I am at 5 p.m. Saturdays is because of his hilarious send-up on English majors with his running bit on Professional Organization of English Majors.

There is all kinds of wry in there, and a lot of needed jabs at English majors themselves. Sometimes ones I suspect only English majors catch all the self-aimed jabs.

On Friday, I wandered around Chicago’s Southeast Side with John Vukmirovich, a guy I am pretty sure was a fellow English major years before me. He calls his morning rambles, a perambulation.

For some reason, this morning “perambulation on wry” sounded fun, to me at least.