A defining moment that changed my life

I'm sure some of you have looked back over your lives and thought of that defining moment that occurred... that was like a beacon in the night showing you the path to your destiny. It could have been a teacher who took the time to help you solve a problem, and then and there, you knew you would set your goal in helping youngsters learn. Or perhaps a doctor who helped cure your little brother or sister of a life threatening disease and you pledged that when you grew up you would serve mankind by curing cancer.

My defining moment was somewhat less than that...it occurred about 50 years ago.....but I can remember it as if it happened yesterday.I used to go to the Ames Theater in Dayton, Ohio every Saturday morning . Although I enjoyed the double features that would begin around noon and would have fun seeing my friends and we would all sit in the front row and stare up at the screen, but usually by the end of the first movie my attention would begin to wander. We would get into some kind of trouble at that time by getting paper towels and soaking them with water in the men's room and then throwing them to the ceiling causing them to stick till the end of time. Sometimes we would go into a stall and lock the door and then climb under the common wall to the next stall and lock that door until all of the stalls would be locked tight......and we would finish off the men's room with stuffing wads of paper towels into the urinals and keep flushing them until they would overflow.

Another adventure we would embark on would be starting in the first row of the theater and climb under every seat leading up to the final row....our clothes would be soaked with grape pop that people would pour on our heads, milk duds stuck to our shirts and buttered popcorn covering our faces.....and then...the defining moment.I can remember sitting in the first row just as the movie began...my neck bent awkward looking straight up....the cartoon had ended and I was already getting ready to make the low crawl on my belly...and then I heard this sound coming from the giant speakers overhead.

It was a whistling sound..something like a call from one person to another...and then it came once again..and the music rose...the whistling got faster and louder...the camera began to zoom into a neighborhood, that looked like you wouldn't want to be there after dark....and then the clicking noise....the snapping of fingers......I watched with my eyes glued to the screen and then one after another, young duck tailed teens started appearing in the scene..clicking...dancing and being so damn cool....I wanted to be one of them...dancing...and singing and ....making me want to be part of something I had never seen before....

Obviously I never went off to Hollywood or New York and became a dancer or a singer....but the defining moment for me on that day....was....I decided to no longer climb under the seats and stuff up the toilets....I had fallen in love with musicals...and it was cool.....My brother Rick must have enjoyed that movie because he bought the soundtrack album and I played it over and over until I could sing every song, even imitate some of the moves and just look damn cool......I was Tony...singing to Maria...and I loved it..."West Side Story" changed my life.