Sitting in the sunlit dining room of our old, cramped, and entirely too dusty rental, my mother briefly showed me some photos of the new town I would be living in. 

“It’s got bike trails, Jack,” she said. “Isn’t that cool?”

“Yeah,” I responded, thinking of the Mongoose I hadn’t ridden in two years, “Very cool.”

My dad had just gotten hired at a new job, meaning we would be hitting the western trail and moving to Texas, of which all my knowledge stemmed from reruns of “King Of The Hill” and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” not exactly great omens. 

The town, a suburb of Houston, was called Kingwood and contained two high schools. After uprooting my life, my parents graciously offered me the chance to choose the school I’d be graduating from in three years. 

“We need to get a place in the right zone,” my mother said, walking off to call the movers. “So, move with a purpose please.”

Reluctantly, I turned my gaze to my phone – two schools, two paths, one kid and zero ideas. I found myself getting angry.

“Why does it even matter?” I thought. 

The schools looked the same to me, and probably wouldn’t have any of the extracurriculars I enjoyed, so why even bother? I was about to yell across the room to my mother that she should do whatever she wants when I got a text from a family friend who lived in the area. 

The text read, “Hey do you know where you’re going?”

I responded with an intentionally dry, “no” (all lowercase for added aloofness). 

“Well, do you still do acting or whatever? Kingwood Park has a good theatre program if you’re interested.”

“Yeah I’ll think about it,” I said, lying through the screen. 

I had quit acting recently on account of my horrible memory and (being the angsty and pretentious 14-year-old I was) disinterest at the “showiness” of the whole affair. Either way, the one-sided conversation solved the indecision issue and I told my mother that K-Park was where I wanted to go. 

I spent a particularly boring summer here in Texas, languishing in a pool of sweat and self pity before starting school that August. It was in my second period of the first day where I met theater director Brandi Perkins, who like me, was starting her first year at Kingwood Park. 

I chose theater class much in the same way I had also chosen track and field. I needed the credits to graduate. In the recesses of my mind, there was no intention of ever taking part in a production – a combination of my fear of the (mostly true) stereotype of theater kid cliqueyness as well-lingering bitterness toward the arts for my past failures. 

However, throughout the first half of my time in class, I found myself having a lot more fun than I expected. Perkins was a lot different than directors I’d had in the past, so when she asked if anyone wanted to be in that year’s musical production, I considered it. 

People who know me know I am not a Disney fan, and acting in “The Little Mermaid” is a situation I would not be caught dead in. So being a crewmember is the role I resigned myself to. I had little experience in the production field shooting short films and skate videos with my friends in middle school, but as for the skills of running tech in a show I was a complete novice. 

When technical director Courtney Neuwirth asked me about my experience, I called upon my years of lying on stage to effectively convince her I wasn’t a complete liability to myself and others and should be allowed to operate power tools. The next week I got an email saying I was in charge of props. Wonderful, “That should be easy,” I thought, not even knowing what that sort of job entailed. 

I reported to the first rehearsal and pretended to know what she was talking about while she was instructing us on how to build a set. I held an impact driver as far away from me as possible and tried to keep myself from flinching every time the saw went off, wanting to make myself indisposable out of an irrational fear of being fired. 

Eventually though, like with most things we set our minds to, I got better. I still had no friends aside from the orchestra’s piano player, but I now had a purpose. 

Every time I made a mistake or got yelled at or was ignored was just a sign that I needed to be better – to work harder and become truly indispensable. That show became my life and once it was over I knew I needed to be first on the list to sign up for the next one and the next and the next. 

Three years later, I am an international thespian and working on my sixth show. I’ve met a lot of people I’d consider to be my closest friends and I’ve had experiences that have changed the way I live my life. Even if I leave the performing arts behind in college, I am so glad with how I’ve spent my time here down south, and it all started with taking a chance.