About 15 years ago, after I finished University, I took a job working at small town newspaper in Rolla, Mo., as a reporter. It was my first job and was also 2008, right around the time every piece of economic news was horrific. (I also interviewed for a job in Ardmore, Ok., but luckily I didn’t get it and had moral support from my family not to take a job in a place I thought I would hate.) I took the job when it was offered and worked for the Rolla Daily News.
Needless to say, Rolla did not have much in the way of Jewish life. Other than myself, I was aware of three other Jews in town, a guy who owned McDonald’s franchises and quarry, was pretty wealthy and a rabid Tea Partier. I was friendly with him, but he was not my speed. The other was someone who’s child told me he was Jewish, I was an education reporter and spent a lot of time in schools. I never met him, so whether he was really Jewish, who knows. And the final one, who I actually liked and became my guitar teacher, was a chiropractor who had converted to Christianity earlier in life. But he was from New York, so even then he still radiated “Jew”
Anyway, I lived there for about 2.5 years, and met a lot of people in the town. It was a difficult experience in some ways, not only being the only observant Jew in town, which to their credit, my bosses never forced me to work on days I said I could not. I did make good friends with colleagues, most of them.
One such colleague, who worked in the advertising department, had parents who were both pastors and co-ran a local church. I got to her and her daughters pretty well, they would come into the office often and I was one of the youngest people there, so they would hang around my desk. I never met the parents, but I am sure they had heard of me.
One November, toward the end of my time there, I was sitting at my desk when the person next to me, who had a number of different responsibilities, including typing up and preparing Church News, just little paragraphs from the many local churches about what they were doing on Sundays. Except this round was about their Christmas Programs.
She turned to me and said “Adam, this Christmas play is about you.”
“Huh, what does that mean?”
“Read this description.”
The synopsis of the play was basically this: Archie (again, my name is Adam), a Jewish reporter, is busy writing an Op-Ed for the Christmas paper about how the holiday is not really religious anymore, but a secular holiday open to everyone. Spoiler Alert, he goes on an Ebenezer Scrooge like voyage, which involves mostly just him with an “Angel,” who looks like Annie, stare at a nativity scene while a voiceover reads scriptural passages. He converts, and magically, his wife converts after meeting a group of dancing Jews for Jesus. There are also a number of dance interludes, which are surprisingly poorly chereographed and involved props like sticks and scarfs. The most accurate part of the story is that Archie and his family are going to go get Chinesse food and see a movie. How they got that right, who knows.
There was an ongoing debate after I read the description about whether I was really the basis, but many of my colleagues called me Archie for a time.
I did not attend, even though I was invited. However, the daughter of the Pastors did record it and shared it with me, to which I watched later on with some friends who worked at the paper. Holy moly was that bad. I mean, real bad. The kind of bad that people who make think it is really good. I mean, it was hard to be offended by the story, the bar was low given these people’s religious beliefs and lack of experience with other people. It was the dance numbers that really upset me. I mean, seriously, if you are going to have them and have that meany, there were at least five, try to do better!
I do not know what became of my copy of this performance, but it was probably the closest I will come to have any sort of stage production be based on my life.
submitted by /u/BerlinJohn1985
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Source: Reditt
