#4 - Welcome to Munchkinland
The story of one small poop that caused a decades-long mystery.
Picture it. It’s August of 2004 and you’re cast as munchkin #6 in your first real play, The Wizard of Oz on the big stage at your local Jewish Community Center. Ashlee Simpson's “Pieces of Me” is blasting on the car radio while you wind your way home after your first dress rehearsal, regaling your parents with the tale that will haunt the backstage of the Mizel Arts and Culture Center for many years to come. Someone pooped on stage during the full-cast opening number. Everything will need to be sanitized professionally before they can run a rehearsal again. You’re a survivor.
Things had only just gotten started. Right in the middle of the first big musical number, with the entire cast singing and dancing around each other, a wayward log appeared. After it slid out of someone’s pant leg and onto the stage, that cast member danced away, and some poor, unfortunate soul stepped in the evidence and smeared it across the floor, stage left.
That shit stepper must have yelled, screamed, or somehow signaled their distress. No one remembers exactly what tipped off the adults. But once they knew, the show was over. Everyone was shuffled off to the main hallway to get picked up by their parents.
Though the adults that summer undoubtedly all discussed the incident, none of the cast ever knew who did it. Children brought the dramatic turd tale home to their parents, who likely had their assumptions. But, largely, this became a grand enigma. Left unresolved, it started to exit the collective consciousness of The Wizard of Oz cast from 2004. Some had begun to question if they had made the whole thing up.
Until now.
Personally, I have zero stakes in this big reveal. But, I have a few friends who do. The smallest munchkin cast that summer, Emily Abramson, recalls the incident with a forlorn sigh, in total disbelief that this long-forgotten case has, in fact, come to a close during her lifetime. Nearly twenty years after the fact, Emily got the closure she didn’t know she needed at my bachelorette party last weekend.
It was another friend of mine, Miss Kelly Kathleen Taylor, who pooped on the stage that fateful day. She insists that I use her real name for this edition of the Poop Scoop because she’s finally ready to come clean.
I must also mention that she is my oldest friend, the person I grew up taking baths and learning how to read with. She’s mentioned in my first post via her dad, Steve, who first sat us down to talk about taking a proper bowel movement. He’s a serious advocate of optimized health, hydration, and (most importantly) listening to your body. So, naturally, when Kelly started feeling like she’d need to poop during that first dress rehearsal, she was trained to let her natural instincts take over.
But, mid-harmony with the other munchkins, Kelly figured there was no way she was going to be allowed to get off the stage. She was, after all, but a munchkin amongst the real actors (read: local teenagers), who her singing and dancing were meant to support. She fought her instincts and resolved to just get through the rest of the show. Not because she wanted to. But because she felt she had to.
Emily remembers being with everyone and rushing off backstage without explanation. Flurries of colorful costumes whirled around her as the adults said something about sanitizing the stage. What could have possibly happened? Was this some strange act of biological warfare?
Then the whispers started: “Someone totally just pooped on stage.” Much to this cast’s credit, no one (vocally) blamed anyone in particular. It could have been any of the thirty children singing on stage at that given moment. Emily remembers rumors that one of the older kids had to have been pranking them all. But she always felt in her heart it must have been the yippy kid cast as Toto.
Kelly patiently listened to the commotion around her. Something so horrible – her worst nightmare, actually – had happened so fast and without any immediate consequence. And, in her own words, she “was the least likely suspect.” Kelly knew she’d get away with it when it came to the cast. Even if the older kids decided it must have been one of the little munchkins, she didn’t stand out among the crowd. If anything, she was the most professional of them all. Steely-faced, resolved, and on top of all the choreography.
Unfortunately, this professionalism would clue at least one adult in on the mystery of whodunit. Kelly pulled the costume director aside. She did, after all, require some assistance without her mom or dad there. Plus, she was probably going to need a backup pair of pants. She remembers the director as very kind and good to her.
Enough time has passed that we all can be kind and good to Kelly about this incident now. A group of my friends all coming together to celebrate the end of my single days was the perfect setting for her to finally tell us her truth. Sometimes, all we need is the familiar cackle of our oldest friends to remember that life isn’t so serious; that shit happens and we all move on.
To those of you who grew up in Colorado and found yourselves in the theater scene or adjacent to it, I hope you all can rejoice in this revelation with us all. And to readers who may a) have yet to step foot in the Staenberg-Loup Jewish Community Center or b) understand why anyone partakes in musicals, I hope you appreciate the gravity of this situation.
And, as always, I’d like to remind everyone about the importance of listening to your body, as Kelly’s dad, Steve, insists. Here’s a link to the hydrating salad he makes every day for lunch. 10/10 recommend adding onions and jalapenos and turning it into cowboy caviar. Just spitballing while you’re still here. XOXO.
Favorite one yet. Has she returned to the stage?