Goodbye to my blue-eyed Paul.

In the tenth grade I enrolled in a basic drama course at school. I'm pretty terrible at acting, so I don't know why I wanted to spend a semester in the class, but I did. One of our assignments was to memorize a monologue and recite it for the rest of the class. I don't remember how I found mine. Actually, I think the teacher loaned me a book of monologues and I picked it out from there. Anyway, I of course don't remember it now but the gist of it was a girl (me) gets in an elevator and discovers Paul Newman standing next to her and she sort of freaks out on the inside over how awesome it is to be in an elevator with the dreamy Paul Newman.

About this time (the tenth grade, or at least I think it was the tenth grade) I also joined the Speech Team. I'm not sure why I did that either. I think it was because I had friends doing it, too. I bet I was also trying to join random things so I could get into college. Anyway, I joined the Speech Team and the only thing I really remember doing for it was going around reciting this Paul Newman monologue. And of course I never won anything, because I'm not good at acting. And at one particular event I was so nervous I even messed up and had to start over three times. That's incredibly embarrassing. I don't know why I'm sharing this with the internet.

The whole point of this ridiculous post is to share the time I discovered who Paul Newman was, because even though I'd heard his name before my monologuing days I didn't know what he looked like or in what movies he had starred. So my dad pointed him out on a jar of spaghetti sauce, and then I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. That was when I discovered who he was. I also felt like I had this special relationship with him, as if I really had been in an elevator with the hunky blue-eyed man. And that means I have a special place in my heart for him, and I'm therefore a little sad to learn of his passing. Farewell Mr. Newman.