It is October 11th 2009. It is the day of the Chicago Marathon, light rain and a gray sky. My marriage will shatter in less than 3 months but I don’t know that as I leave work early to take the El to Second City for orientation in my level A improv class. The class I have forgotten to take since I moved to Chicago in 1988.
I step off the El at Sedgewick and am moved and invigorated by the runners. The physical commitment and drive to push themselves for this day is huge and foreign to me. My world has been very small for a few years, work, errands and insomnia consuming most waking hours. I am a worrier and a low stakes perfectionist so I have mapped the route at home and made sure to leave plenty of room for error.
Mark W. Anderson, my husband of eight years has been antsy to leave Chicago where he has lived his whole life and insisted we purchase a bungalow to complete his Northside dream. He has just graduated Columbia College and is a real journalist now. Which means he works from home and cannot contribute to chores or training the dog we have gotten in June because he is a great thinker and needs much solitude. My first husband was a musician so, there you go.
So he is anxious to uproot and I think about what I would want to do here if we were leaving and I realize that I have never even seen a show at Second City let alone entertained taking a class, which is odd considering my love for comedy and life-long pursuit of being the funniest person in the room. I save the money and enroll.
I am walking down North Ave towards Wells admiring the runners and daydreaming about their backstories and I realize this orientation has great significance as I leap over the threshold of self-taught comic to Group Member. I am anxious that I will not be enough in some mysterious way. I don’t really know how to be part of a group. I am gangly and awkward in the presence of more than 4 people.
It dawns on me that I am going to have to cross the street. North Ave which stands between me and Second City, four lanes teeming with precision athletes. I am not that in any way. I cracked my head open thirteen times by age twelve. I generally miss when walking through doorways, mildly clotheslining myself numerous times a day. I am now at the corner, pacing and wheeling, looking for any other way to traverse the expanse. Why isn’t there an officer of the law to help a lady across?
I decide I can’t risk it and orientation is just a stupid pep rally, who cares? The forty-foot crossing is too much to ask even though everything I admire about hard work and creativity is within reach on the other side. I turn to leave. I could ruin a runner’s time, or worse, injure them. This is best. I will stop at Dinkel’s and get donuts for the crew at work and tell them I had a good time. They are so excited for me.
As I resign myself to failure I notice a guy, scanning the expanse, stepping forward then back, looking up and down the street. I shout, “Second City orientation?!”
He nods and shrugs, “Not today.”
I will do with him what I could not do alone and I say, “Let’s go!” We run bobbing and weaving through the unpredictable mass and make it to the other side, no harm to us or others. I am part of something; I am willing to face my fear.
We go inside and find our seats. The place is packed and nervous energy fills the room. A dynamic blonde leaps onto the stage to welcome us. She is breathless and apologizes for being a bit tardy, shaking rain from her jacket. She asks if anybody had to cross North Avenue to get in and a number of hands shoot up. She turns sideways revealing that she is covered in mud, “I did too, didn’t quite make it but I didn’t hurt a runner!”
I feel like I am waking up from a long winter’s nap.
We file out into the drizzle, inspired and empowered to fail often in our new endeavor. The struggling runners of 11 a.m. are easy to dodge and the ambulance will be bringing up the rear soon. The crowds have disappeared and it is mostly Second City students on the sidewalk heading West on North Ave. I see the injured and weakening runners, they are only at the halfway point. This year one participant will finish just past 8 p.m., fourteen hours after the elites have started the day. I stand in the gray day, clutching the metal barrier, cheering them on, picking out a detail in their clothing so they know it is they who are being encouraged, “Run Mr. Bubble! You can do it purple shoes! Run you poor bastards! Run!”
By the time I’ve finished Level A an eight week course, on December 23, I will return from a twelve-hour work day, my husband will be sitting in the dark house, his bags packed by the back door. He will have given our dog to a friend in Aurora, 42.7 miles from our home and rented an apartment somewhere in Rogers Park, 8.9 miles from our home. Unbeknownst to me, he will return on New Years’ Eve, while I am at work, to gut the house of his belongings, and knock out the internet in the process.
I will return for a few classes of Level B in January before deciding it is a dangerous place to blurt out the first thing I think and turn my focus toward keeping my job and dog and house. Eventually, Mark W. Anderson will be dead from a lot of cancer. I will keep the house and dog and job. I will return to Second City in February of 2011 and graduate the Improv Program in January of 2012.