Tales of a Fourth Grade Something

“Step inside walk this way, you and me babe. Hey! Hey!” flowed from my lips as the energy pounded its way out. The crowd roared like a lion, and I looked over at my partners, A.J. on my left and Colby on my right, they were into it. I stomped my feet with every beat produced by the one armed drummer. We were really rockin’. We would most certainly be the talk of the school after this performance.

I looked down at my microphone to make sure that it was off. It was. That was a good thing, I didn’t want my breath to go out over the P.A. and interfere with the music. I wanted this performance to be flawlessly cool. The fourth, fifth, and sixth graders on the floor of the small auditorium didn’t seem to notice any defects. For all intents and purposes my group was awesome.

This act was an idea I’d spawned about a month before. The fifth grade at my elementary school announced that they were going to put on a talent show. I ran home and whipped out my favorite cassette tape, Def Lepard’s Hysteria. I loved the songs Rocket, Armageddon It and Love Bites, but I knew that if I was going to develop a truly cool lip sync act, I’d need a truly rockin’ song. The choice was obvious, Pour Some Sugar On Me.

I practiced the routine for two weeks as I prepared for an audition in front of the fifth grade class. The audition was critical and so was my image in front of the older students. So I whipped out my Jean Jacket and Roos for the trial run. When I finished the tryout, the judges were psyched. A.J. and Colby joined after that performance, and became my guitarists. It felt pretty good to be held in high esteem by fifth graders. I figured that when they moved on to sixth grade and were in charge of the school I’d get a cabinet position or something.

Well as I moved my mouth in time to the words it was clear that everything I’d envisioned was playing out perfectly. The other students and the residents of the old folks home where we were performing were loving this. People were waving their arms in the dim lights. Girls were screaming and guys were yelling. We were most definitely rockin’ the house.

The song neared its end and our moment of triumph. The vocals ended, and the last notes flowed through the cassette player. A.J. gripped his wooden acoustic guitar, and Colby took his plastic replica of an electric guitar and the two leaped off the stage as I glared into the crowd with defiant look of a true rock star. Oh yes, I’d arrived.

The cheesy magician, and the twin sister dancing act were no match for the intensity we built on that stage. Everyone else was like show-and-tell, while we were see-and-thrill. In the second show which took place after lunch for the first through third graders, we had to go on last, because let’s face it who wanted to go on after us. It was our moment of triumph.

The three of us never got together after that performance. Our conflicting egos, A.J.’s $2 a day Now and Laters habit, and the lack of interest from a major record label led to one of the most dramatic downfalls in Rock N’ Roll history. I moved on to a quieter life of lip syncing books-on-tape, but always craved the thrill of the stage.

Eight years later I popped in that same Def Lepard tape that had brought me fame in my car as I pulled out of the parking lot after my high school graduation. As my car rocked its way out of the parking lot, and people watched me I remembered the past. I looked over at my girl friend and the diploma on the back seat. I was happy with the way things turned out, even if fame and fortune weren’t in the cards after all.

Puttin’ on the Hitz had been canceled years ago, and Milli Vanilli were shunned despite the absolute brilliance of their act, so there was really no chance for me to return to lip syncing. But as I left that graduation I knew that I’d once been a star, and held an audience captive with my lips. No one could ever take that away from me. I was a fourth grade something, and really how many people can say they’d reached the top by age ten. Not many, and at age eighteen I was still proud of that past.

Girls, money, and notoriety had passed me by, but something else lay ahead. I took Julie’s hand, smiled and kissed her. She was the future now, and it was time to be a superstar of adulthood. I rolled out of the parking lot and onto the pavement of the great unknown. I headed up the highway to tomorrow, and thanked God for both my brush with stardom and the road ahead.