He spotted it in the paper, a movie company was coming to San Diego to film and they needed lots of extras.
If you don’t know the lingo, extras are all those hundreds of people you see in movies who never talk.
My husband is a great actor from another life, I’m sure of it.
This life?
Not so good.

He’d heard the way into the movies was through plays, so he joined a group and did plays and he was pretty good but that’s not what he wanted, he wanted the movies.

Eventually he did get a few parts in actual big screen movies and a few TV movies. No real talking roles but he was there, he got paid and he loved it.

So now San Diego was calling for lots of extras.
Count on it, he was going so what the heck, I went with him.

We arrived an hour early.
There were already 100 people standing in line.

We were approached by a friendly, smiling young woman.
She handed us each a clipboard and pen and told us to fill it out and hold on to it, they’d pick it up and she gave us each a plastic number; 101 and 102.

I was holding a plastic 102 in my hands.

Wait a minute, being in a movie is probably way past the last thing I ever want to do in life, I was just an observer.
I just came to watch!
But 101 convinced me to just fill it out for the heck of it, there wasn’t much else to do while standing in line.

The questionnaire began like most…..name etc but then all of a sudden that piece of paper wanted to know if I would smoke in a movie?
Would I kiss someone?
Would I wear swim-wear?
How about lingere?
And by the way…..
Would I go nude?
WOULD I GO NUDE?
I looked at 101.
“Check YES on all the boxes” he said.
“WHAT? YES I’D GO NUDE? I can’t do that!”
“Just check YES.”
And so I did!

Hundreds more people had arrived in a short amount of time and the line had formed around the building.
I couldn’t help but wonder where the heck all these people were coming from and why weren’t they at work?
And why was I there?

There was a feeling of intensified excitement in the air and everyone was talking to everyone.

Number 99 asked about our movie experience but before we could answer, he was telling about all the movies he’d been in, brag, brag, brag, blah, blah, blah.
I think I shut his mouth when I told him I’d been in a few decent roles of box office biggies!
That wasn’t really a lie, I was merely acting at practicing acting.

Some of the people seemed to be in costume, like they were baseball players and, remembering this is California….. there was a fair amount of weirdo’s dressed as weirdo’s walking around.

People wearing industry badges sipping Starbuck’s, were everywhere.

But they were pretty prompt, at 10 the big doors swung open and we were broken down in to groups of ten and escorted inside.

Yellow CAUTION tape kept us all on a path that took us to friendly, smiling faces sitting behind desks all around the inside of the big bare first floor of the building.

Aden introduced himself, took our paperwork and asked for 2 pieces of I.D.
TWO pieces of ID?
We didn’t have two.
We each had only one.
My frustrated actor was not going to let this deter us.
We made a deal with Aden…..we’d zip home and get our social security cards but when we got back, we didn’t want to wait in line.
Aden was good with that, told us to come straight to him.

We were back in 40 minutes.
We walked past everyone and went straight inside.
I had a Starbuck’s.
That made the crowd think we were “somebody.”
Just me, acting again!
Hey, they didn’t know!

We found Aden and I don’t know how he remembered us or our situation but he did.

He checked our ID and true to his word, into the room we went where our paperwork and ID’s were once again checked.
They did a few computer notes and we were then sent to the photographers who snapped us, attached the photos to paperwork, and passed them on to the next desk.

Everyone we dealt with was so friendly and no one hurried us.

We asked about the movie.
It was gonna be a TV Series filmed in San Diego about a great female baseball player.
They needed the stadium full of fans, thus the call for extras.
We were asked if we could work late.
What the heck, we said yes to NUDITY so what’s the problem with late hours?

We laughed all the way home.
NUDITY?
Where?
In the bleachers?
Just dumb!

My husband, who hates cell phones, kept his with him everywhere he went.
No calls.
He checked his messages.
No messages.

The date of filming came and went.

I assured my husband he’s made for much better roles than sitting in bleachers.

I don’t hate my cell phone, I just don’t pay attention to it.
The ringer doesn’t ring, the vibrator doesn’t vibrate.
It lies in the bottom of my purse in case I need to call AAA.

A month down the road I was emptying my purse and noticed a light was blinking on my cell phone. It took me a few minutes to figure out that it was trying to tell me I had messages.

Then it took a while to figure out where those messages were and what I had to do to listen to them.

It’s true, I’m cell phone illiterate!
But eventually I heard three messages, boom, boom, boom all in a row, all from the same person.

They wanted ME to be in the movie!
I needed to call the number she left…..three times.

I wasn’t sure I could do this. I have no interest in being in a movie.
What if that made Lobo feel bad?
But wait, what if this was the beginning of a budding career in the movies for me, like maybe I could be the next Meryl Streep?
No, never mind!

But I did call the number and spoke with the woman who’d left all three messages.
She said they had wanted me for an extra but she’d made the calls 3 weeks ago, the movie had already been filmed.

Let that be a lesson to me.
The cell now rings and pulsates and it has a special spot where I can get to it in a hurry.

But what do I care?
I didn’t want to be in a movie anyways.
Especially nude on a bleacher!