{"id":4271,"date":"2016-04-28T10:50:35","date_gmt":"2016-04-28T17:50:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/?p=4271"},"modified":"2016-04-27T17:56:44","modified_gmt":"2016-04-28T00:56:44","slug":"big-birthday-memory-3-try-to-remember-the-fantasticks-jerry-orbach-the-internet-and-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/28\/big-birthday-memory-3-try-to-remember-the-fantasticks-jerry-orbach-the-internet-and-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Birthday Memory #3: TRY TO REMEMBER \u2014 THE FANTASTICKS, JERRY ORBACH, THE INTERNET AND ME"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fantasticks<\/a><\/p>\n

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I\u2019ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. Today \u2013 from August 24, 2006<\/em><\/p>\n

OK \u2013 so I should be used to it by now.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been \u2014 as I often say, a walking demographic Baby Boomer as long as I can remember.\u00a0 But on this morning after the re-opening of THE FANTASTICKS<\/a>*\u00a0 \u2013 which ran off-Broadway for 42 years<\/a>, I read “adults 55+ adapting online<\/a>.”\u00a0 Of course they are \u2014 sooner or later whatever I\u2019m doing becomes part of a generational wave.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t worry \u2013 there IS a connection.<\/p>\n

I saw THE FANTASTICKS\u00a0 with my college room mate and her mother during fall vacation of my freshman year.\u00a0 That was 1964 \u2013 four years after it opened.\u00a0 At the end, all of 18, I was crying so hard that the woman sitting next to me \u2013 probably 25 or so \u2013 handed me the rose her date must have given her at dinner.\u00a0 I kept it on the wall of my room for years.<\/p>\n

\"El<\/a>El Gallo \u2014 the irresistible seducer\u00a0 and originator of the “hurt\u2019 without which “the heart is hollow” \u2014\u00a0 was first played by Jerry Orbach<\/a>.\u00a0 [hear him sing Try to Remember here<\/a>.]\u00a0 I met him when I was close to 50 \u2013 and told him I\u2019d seen the show when I was 18.\u00a0 His face just changed \u2013 not a trace of Lennie Briscoe but a combination of affection, nostalgia and pleasure.\u00a0 We spoke a bit more and then I apologized for approaching him at a reception and acting like a groupie.\u00a0 He replied “You saw the Fantasticks when you were EIGHTEEN!\u00a0 That wasn\u2019t an interruption that was a pleasure.”\u00a0 So I guess the story had the same impact on the cast that it had on girls like me.\u00a0 “Please God please,” the young girl (“the girl”) cries out \u2013 “don\u2019t let me be NORMAL!”\u00a0 That was me alright.\u00a0 Please let me be singular \u2013 not like the others!<\/p>\n

Well it hasn\u2019t turned out that way.\u00a0 Whatever I come to, my peers hit within a year or so.\u00a0 It made me a great talk show producer \u2013 never a visionary too far ahead to be relevant, just enough ahead to know what story to do next.\u00a0 I guess that\u2019s why I accommodated to my role as close enough to normal but with an edge \u2014 rather than the downtown woman I had once wished to be.<\/p>\n

I know about this headlong Boomer journey online because my older son, in the industry, had read a similar study.\u00a0 Last weekend I told him that I seemed to be getting a lot more online consulting work and his theory was that companies need boomer consultants more because more “civilian” boomers are finally hitting the web.\u00a0 I always knew we would; the tribe that is the baby boom loves to be connected.\u00a0 The web was a perfect home for us.\u00a0 Just like THE FANTASTICKS.<\/p>\n

*OK Feminist friends, there\u2019s an element of sexism in this original fairy tale (they\u2019ve rewritten the only really troubling song) but I have chosen to ignore it.\u00a0 It just can\u2019t trump the wonder and poetry.<\/p>\n