15 Minutes...of What, I Don't Know.

So it's getting closer and closer to my big day. The day that will change my life forever. The most important day of them all. Yes, that's right, the day I'm going to be an Extra in Drew Barrymore's new movie, "Whip It." This Friday, August 9th (W.I. Day, I like to call it), I will take that biggest of steps into movie stardom. Or into Pedestrian Number 3942-dom. Possibly Roller Skater Number 412-dom. Or maybe just That Girl in the Back Who We Had to Edit Out Because She Kept Looking at the Camera Waving and Giggling-dom. No matter what happens, though, there is one thing that is pretty much guaranteed. I will, somehow, make a complete and total fool of myself.

I'm not just being down on myself. I am cynical, yes, but I am also mostly optimistic. I wake up each morning fully expecting to, at the very least, fall up the stairs in a blaze of glory. I may do something smaller like accidentally touch a VERY hot pot lid. Or run into a door frame. Or drop something, usually that's breakable and/or valuable. It's a part of me, of my very existence. It's who I am.

I am a klutz.

There, I said it. Ask anyone in my family and they will confirm it. Heck, watch me for a half-hour and you can confirm it for yourself. I can't deny it because Elizabeth will call me out, so I must share it with the world.

So here's my problem. I told the Extras Casting People that I can roller skate. This is not a lie. When I was in kindergarten, I roller skated around our basement and garage, usually rocking out to Madonna's "True Blue" album (her best stuff by FAR), and I could skate circles around anyone! (Quite literally - you couldn't do much else BUT skate in a circle in those small spaces.) It's just that it's been a while. When you're in kindergarten, if you fall you are fairly close to the ground. Plus, you haven't been walking all that many years, so the fact that you can roller skate at all at that age is pretty amazing. But when you've been walking for nearly 27 years, it's not so cute when you fall down and go "Ouchy!" I'm thinking that roller skating is like riding a bike - once you've done it, it's not that hard to pick up on it again. However, my klutziness-to-age ratio has increased over the years, and I have to factor that in. It is very possible that I will get on set on W.I. Day and, as they say, "fall down go boom."

So, best case scenario, I walk in, the director (Drew Barrymore herself) sees my innate acting skills and instantly decides to put me in the forefront of all the scenes as well as to re-shoot most of the other scenes they've done so I can be featured more prominently. (She'd cast me as star but has contractual obligations, so promises me a starring role in her next big film.) I'm smooth, whitty, and graceful, and the envy of all the other Extras.

Worst case scenario, I walk in, the director (Drew Barrymore herself) is knocked over by the door as I open it (too fast); I trip over her but manage to stay up on my roller skates, but lose my sense of direction as my helmet has fallen over my eyes; I then go careening into the closest camera person, who falls backward into the camera, knocking it into the executive producer, who spills her coffee all over the sound board, and all the while I'm still shooting all over the set like a ball in a pinball machine, my arms flailing and Mormon-style expletives ("holy monkeys!") falling from my lips.

Well, at least I'll make it into the Blooper Reel.