I Remember…Winning An “Oscar”

Day 42

I’ve previously mentioned that I am somewhat obsessed with the Academy Awards - AKA the Oscars. Well, I’m not a fan just because I have memorized all the winners in the major categories of every year, from 1928 to the present. I am a fan because I have a personal connection with the Oscar awards: I’ve won one!

OK, now I need to be a little more specific because I haven’t actually won an Academy Award per se. But I did win an “Oscar” award when I was about 7 or 8 years old. Here’s my award:

“Oscar”, as in Oscar the Grouch. I need to be specific again, because I was certainly not given this award for being a grouch. No, I was given this award for acting, for a brilliant performance I gave in a melodrama. The melodrama was a production put on by myself and my Cub Scout troop at our church.

While I don’t remember the specific plot, I do remember that it was actually a spoof of melodramas; you know, those overly dramatic stories where there is a damsel in distress, an over-the-top villain and a too-good-to-be-true hero. Well, in our melodrama I was a sheriff in the old west (a supporting player) with a beautiful daughter (played by a cub scout--hence the comedy aspect of the play) who is hassled by some bad dude. There is a hero, some “white knight” cowboy who saves the day when the daughter is tied to the railroad tracks by the bad guy.

Here’s what I vividly remember about this experience: I wore a fake mustache, which was just a mustache drawn on cardboard and taped under my nose, which naturally kept slipping off. The comedy of the play was how everything was done literal, meaning that if someone was described as “galloping into a room” then they would literally gallop on a toy horse. For my part, as the sheriff, I “pin” the bad guy down by literally taking a large cardboard-drawn safety pin and stick it to the bad guy on the ground.

At the end of the performance, after the applause and cheers from the proud parents and the rest of the audience, each of the Cub Scouts received an “Oscar” award. I still have my award after all these years!

One quibble, though. Since the award was given for a performance on the stage (not in a movie) I should have been given a Tony award; then again, since there isn’t a Sesame Street character named "Tony" I understand why it was an “Oscar” award.