Oh, the energy of youth!

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was tonight's offering at the Redding Broadway Series, and it indeed was amazing!

I'd never seen it, although I'd heard snippets of music from it over the years. Music is by Andrew Lloyd Webber, one of the most versatile composers of our time. He wrote Cats, Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, The Phantom of the Opera, among others, and an amazing Requiem that could not be more different from his musicals.

Joseph was so fun. It's the Biblical story of Joseph and his coat of many colors, and the stage exploded with lights and color and glitter. The musical numbers reflected country, Elvis, reggae, classical, and more. Portraying the Pharaoh as Elvis the King was absolute genius, and totally over the top. We loved it!

And the cast. Young, lithe bodies radiated talent, energy and enthusiasm, and the audience just sucked it up, hooted and hollered, and reveled in it.

Sitting there in the dark, I remembered being that young and seeing endless possibilities stretching before me. I could have done anything!

As a college senior, I'd planned to go to journalism school and into radio news -- aka the next Pauline Frederick (am I dating myself or what!) . Instead I got married and taught school.

But I could have been one of those kids. I had talent and drive, if not a whole lot of musical theatre training where I went to school. Maybe. Or not...

I soaked up the experience tonight, though, and realized --again-- that there are some opportunities that aren't going to happen, at least not in this life. My hair is silvery, my face shows the decades that have gone by, there are achy joints that wouldn't take that life very well. That particular torch has been passed.

But for a little while tonight, my heart sang and danced with those kids, and I remember all that youthful raw emotion, that constant roller coaster of feelings and decisions and relationships and plans and dreams. Nothing is impossible.

It's part of the cycle of life, that hard journey from enthusiastic potential to comfortable acceptance. There are a few parts I wish I could do a little differently, but all in all, I wouldn't change much. That's a pretty good place to be, I think.