First, this is an EXTREMELY hectic time. My family is in the process of moving, and going from a house with two garages and about 4,500 sqft of living space to an 1,100 sqft apartment is not easy. It’s much harder than I would have believed. We have until Tuesday night to complete the move, and I clearly should have taken Monday and Tuesday off work.

My son graduated from High School this last Monday and is now trying to figure out what to do with his summer. There are two high schools in Northern Virginia that host Summer musicals. A musical would certainly qualify as something to do! That's my thinking anyway. Kids from 6th grade through graduated seniors, from virtually all Virginia schools, are encouraged to audition. (This typically means that the musicals get kids from Fairfax, Prince Williams and Loudoun counties.)

As it turns out, Joey's high school is one of the two. His school is known for its outstanding vocalists. The other school is known for its outstanding dancers.

Therefore, two weeks ago, Joey attended the workshop for the Summer production being held at his school. The workshop teaches the kids how to audition. They learn a dance. They are given dialogue to memorize. They're taught a song. They aren’t obligated to audition, but if they choose to, auditions would be held THIS week, on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Joey decided to opt out. He was stressed from his last semester (He graduated with a 4.43 cumulative GPA, straight A’s again, while taking the hardest course load you could imagine). He was unhappy that none of his friends went to the workshop. He was unhappy that his choir director was not participating for the first time in many years. He was unhappy that a boy he knew from Virginia All-State choir and who has a reputation for being a huge jerk seemed to be in line for a key role. Mostly, he just wanted time to relax before heading off to college.

So he didn't sign up to audition.

Wednesday afternoon, he received a call from one of the women who was helping to coordinate the show. She's a drama volunteer at our High School and she knows Joey well. She said she was concerned because she didn't see his name on the audition list. Joey explained that he had decided to pass. He told her why. She asked him to please come in and audition anyway. He told her that he didn’t know the dance and hadn't memorized the dialogue. She said, "That's okay. We all know what you can do. But the Director would like very much to hear you sing." She assured him that auditioning would not commit him. If he received a role, he could still turn it down..

Joey agreed, and he auditioned at 5 p.m. that day.

Afterward, I asked him how he did.

"I screwed up the dance. I messed up a line in the dialogue but I worked my way past it without stopping so I'm happy."

"How'd you do on the song?"

"Oh, I nailed that." Vocals, you see, are his thing.

Yesterday (Thursday) afternoon I received a text from my wife saying that Joey had decided to not do the show. Oh well. I was a little disappointed since I thought he was leaning the other direction. I've also got this romantic idea that being in another musical would be nice way to leave the town where we've lived these past twelve years. But the decision had to be his.

Joey sent a polite and to-the-point e-mail to the lady who'd asked him to audition and told her he was not going to participate. She already knew his reasons, so he didn't list them all. I was CC’ed, so I know he was very mature about it.

Around 5 p.m., the phone rang. It was the woman from the school. She thanked him for the e-mail and acknowledged that she understood his reasons. She then tried every which way to get him to change his mind. She said that they had a plan so that he would not have to work with "the jerk." She said that there had been other complaints about him. "He might not even be in the show," she added. (My suspicion is that they will give him the best known song in the musical, but one which is sung by a shopkeeper who is not otherwise in the story.)

Then she asked Joey to speak with the director. At that point, since they were on speakerphone, I came in and listened. The Director said that that he was aware that Joey was unprepared when he auditioned but that he “was nevertheless blown out of the water by his talent." He said, "I was very impressed, and it takes a lot to impress me."

Here's where it gets interesting.

He said, "You are our one and only choice to play the lead. If you turn this down, I honestly don't know how we can even do the show."

Yow. Talk about laying a massive guilt trip on someone!

He continued. "Have you ever had the lead in a show of this size?"

Joey said no. "I played Barnaby in 'Hello Dolly.' And Abel in 'Children of Eden.'"

The Director told him how good a role like this looks on a person's resume. He said, "I don't know what you're studying in college, but will you be taking any music or art classes?"

Joey said no - which I think shocked the director. He'd heard Joey sing. He no doubt had heard about Joey's piano skills. He probably figured Joey was a talented liberal arts kid with typical liberal arts kid motivations, not realizing that Joey is actually extremely good at EVERYTHING (except for sports, where I’m the first to admit that he pretty much sucks.) Having finished all of the school's Spanish and a year of its Academy Chinese, all of the school's calculus and two semesters of linear algebra and something else, both taught by a George Mason University instructor, he's well on his way to a technical degree. Depending on his final AP scores, he'll be entering UVA with between 43 and 49 credits with 120 needed for graduation. So, he's a linguistics and math kid who also happens to excel in the arts, not a liberal arts kid at all.

So that line of persuasion didn't work, but I have to hand it to the show's Director for trying. He went on to do everything he could to talk Joey into taking the part. He even promised that Mrs. Xxxxx would bring him ice cream every day (a joke, I assume) but I think he knew it was a losing fight.

Toward the end, he asked, "Then why did you audition?"

"Because Mrs. Xxxxx asked me to," Joey said. LOL Way to throw HER under the bus!

In reality, I think what the two others did was hugely unfair. They're adults speaking to a 17 year old, and while they pretended to respect his reasons, they obviously didn't. How can they possibly speak of killing the show if Joey didn't agree to a role? Wow. But that’s what happened.

Yesterday was the deadline for casting decisions. Announcements are to be posted today. He asked Joey to please take an hour or so to think it over and then let them know.

Joey went to his room and sat on his bed. An hour later, 6:30 p.m., I asked him if he'd sent in his answer (they were okay with an e-mailed response). He hadn’t. At that point, his decision was obvious. He was dreading telling them NO and was stalling. I told them he needed to let them know.

Thirty minutes later, I checked again. He still hadn't sent it. I told him I knew that he was turning them down and that it wasn't fair to leave them hanging. He said, "No, that’s not it. I honestly don't know my answer."

That floored me.