When I was younger, I was quite certain that the only thing it would take to make me cool was a Les Miserables t-shirt. Just like everyone else had. I’m sure I hadn’t the faintest what Les Miserables meant when the shirts first started to appear. But I wanted one- and badly.
I got the CD instead.
It was Christmas, two weeks before I’d gotten my first CD player for my 12th birthday; I got Les Mis, Phantom and a Garth Brooks album- for while I was a young girl living outside Nashville, I was still entitled to big city dreams. And big city to me then meant Broadway. Broadway and “Cheers.”
Of course, the CD didn’t make me cool, either. But as with so many Broadway shows, it did show me a world outside my own little misery. It showed me someone else’s. And I was more than happy to wallow in it.
Now that I’m older, and I’ve completely given up on ever being cool, I spent last night watching a live re-broadcast of the Les Miserables 25th Anniversary show from the O2 Arena, singing and crying along with all the women in mom jeans, the grandpas carrying fanny packs to the Century City mall… the songs from my now long worn-out CD ringing through our heads and hearts.
Not of a one of us maintained our cool- but I still want one of those t-shirts.
