This was written over spring break while my family was in Disney. The night before we left, my sister, Julia, and I had auditioned for The Music Man, which was being done by our theatre group. When we arrived at our hotel, we checked to see if the cast list would be up.

I was through the roof excited to see that I was a featured character, but Julia was upset with her role. She wanted to be the dance captain, but was just a regular featured dancer, which is still a good part considering 30-40 kids were cut from the show.

Despite all of this, she was angry-devastated over her role. I’m an obnoxious optimist and was trying to think of all the pros of being cast, but she’s a persistent pessimist and was spiraling with negative thoughts.

Everything described in the poem actually happened when we went to eat afterwards.