When I was growing up, we spent hours playing outside and inside. One of our most memorable pastimes was putting on shows for our mother and for whatever sibling or cousin was too young to perform in the show. It also helped if they were too young to crawl away. I don't like to think we had a captive audience, but ticket sales were never great and we kept all the exits locked during shows.

I remember performances in our garage as we all put on our roller skates and skated more-or-less in rhythm to the 78 rpm records that we played on our kiddy record player. We had such hits as Teresa Brewer's 1950 classic “Choo'n Gum” and “Playmate, Come Out and Play with Me.” The lyrics of “Choo'n Gum” as I recall went as follows: “My dad gave me a nickel to buy a pickle/I didn't buy the pickle, I bought some chewing gum./Chew-chew-chew-chew-chew-chewing gum/ How I love chewing gum/ I'm crazy over chewing gum, what can I do?/I chew the day away, it seems./I'm even blowing bubbles in my dreams.” In this song, Miss Brewer was also given “a quarter for soda water” (whatever that was) and “a dollar to buy a collar” (which really made no sense).

“Playmate” was a song written long before Hugh Hefner sadly co-opted that word and went thusly: “Playmate, come out and play with me/Bring your dollies three/Climb up my apple tree./Slide down my rain barrel/Into my cellar door/And we'll be jolly friends forevermore.”

Our skating spectacular finale was “Hey, Look Me Over”, which tells me that our show had to be circa 1960, since this was from the show “Wildcat” and onstage this song was sung by Lucille Ball. We had some impressive choreography for this number, which you will have to imagine as you read these lyrics: “Hey look me over, Lend me an ear/Fresh out of clover, mortgage up to here./Don't pass the plate folks, don't pass the cup/I figure whenever you're down and out, the only way is up/And I'll be up like a rosebud high on the vine/Don't thumb your nose, but take a tip from mine./I'm a little bit short of the elbow room, so let me get me some,/And look out, world, here I come!”

Just recalling the impressive roller-skating skills of my sisters and me as we slid around the empty garage to these classic tunes brings a tear to my eye. Yes, it is a wonder that we never drew a bigger crowd.

Another of our major productions was staged in the basement. It was The Wizard of Oz with the part of Dorothy Gale played by yours truly. After all, I was the playwright, director, and Big Sister! As I recall, the Wicked Witch wore someone's long gray raincoat. I think my kid brother was either Toto or a flying monkey. Probably both. We had a lot of parts to play and not enough actors.

One thing we knew: the show must go on!