Rejection is a Horrible Thing.

Shane texted me after he looked at the callback list, which was posted the day after auditions.

“I’m not on the callback list,” he said.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

As in the past, Shane seemed to have been overlooked. I flashed back to the days when so many of his friends were accepted into the GT program, when every one of his friends was selected to be a patrol. I remember only too well his self-proclaimed “worst day of my life” – the day that all the patrols went to a huge carnival, exclusively for patrols, and Shane was left at school alone.

It was hard not to think of those things again, as all of the friends who auditioned were called back to audition again. And Shane wondered, again, What about me?

Rejection is a horrible thing. It’s the kind of thing that can take a self-confident person and crush his spirit. Or it can take an insecure person (like me) and turn her into an incapable blob who gives up on life.

Shane is so loaded with talent. He writes better than anyone I’ve ever known. He has a natural-born ability to take photographs that surpasses even my greatest efforts over the past 50 years. He’s a great drummer. He’s fantastic in the tech booth for the school’s morning show, and will likely be the student director next year. He’s hysterically funny, in a low, off-beat sort of way. He gives spectacular speeches and was a great magician (when it interested him to be one). Shane remembers things – punchlines, statistics, things that happened when he was a toddler – so well that sometimes I wonder if there’s more to his memory than just intelligence.

He’s just got a knack for these things.

But when it comes to being chosen for stand-out roles, on stage or in the world, sometimes he just gets overlooked.

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