Years later, when a date sang them to me,
I fell in love with Broadway all over again.
I also fell in love with him.
—
Growing up, I lived just half a block from my elementary school.
Because the school kept its wonderful library open in the summer,
it was one of my favorite places to hang out.
I'd roam its stacks for hours. I never got bored.
When I was ten, I discovered one of the library's treasure troves:
a collection based on each year's premiering Broadway musicals'
libretto (called its “book," including dialogue)and song lyrics)
but no music.
All elementary schools have stages, including mine. Though I remember being in a short in-class two-person one-act production of Stone Soup in second grade (I played the village woman making the soup; my props came from home: an apron, a pot, and a glass jar filled with dried beans), the closest I'd come to seeing an actual stage play was
the annual television airing of Peter Pan.
During that magical summer, those books opened my world.
Warp speed to the ripe old age of twenty-two:
Sometime after college, I went for a job interview in New York.
I didn't get it. And though I desperately wanted to see a Broadway musical, unfortunately, I didn't have the funds or the time.
By twenty-three, I met a man practically perfect in every way,
but specifically one: when we took long walks at night,
he'd serenade me with Broadway show tunes.
Besides having starred in his high school musicals,
while growing up in New York, my lucky fella spent his teens
and college years buying student tickets to all the great shows.
Granted, by then, I'd heard the songs
with the lyrics that I knew by heart.
Still, what better way for someone to profess their love
than to sing it to you?
