I'm Suing a Theme Park for Twerkers Comp

It started with the stance.

I was supposed to be a mouse, a cutesy girl cartoon mouse. I pored over the handbook for cast members. That's what workers are called so we won't feel bad about ourselves dressing up like the entertainment for a kid's birthday party. I thought I was doing a-okay.

But my director, that's what bosses are called so they don't feel bad bossing around kids' birthday party entertainers, told me I needed to "Sparkle more!"

I didn't know what to do with that. How does one turn up the sparkle of a cartoon mouse? If I were, say, Cinderella or Snow White or one of the other princesses who get to look pretty AND talk, I'd speak with more enthusiasm! Or maybe I'd just talk in a breathier voice as if I were inhaling glitter.

But how does one "sparkle more" when one is is not only unable to buried beneath a giant plastic mouse head but also forbidden to speak?

We are forbidden to speak because, according to the handbook, if kids heard a non-mouse like voice coming from their favorite cartoon mouse, it would ruin the magic.

Evidently, cartoon princesses have totally forgettable voices. I could dress as Snow White with my Midwestern accent and the kids would go, "Cool! Makes sense Ms. Snow is from Minnesota!"

But the mouse is condemned to mime. And not the artistic Marcel Marceau trapped-in-a-glass-box type mime either. More like a bad game of charades.

I tried putting my big white gloved hands over my cartoon mouse eyes to play an "up-sparkle" game of peek-a-boo with the kids.

They cried.

I tried waving my white gloved hands more enthusiastically until my giant thumb accidentally caught the nostril of a snot-nosed kid.

He also cried.

My director suggested I reread my "script," AKA employee handbook.

Ms. Mouse: Bend at the knee. Place gloved hands on mousey knees. Make eye contact with the kids.

Okay, so it wasn't Hamlet.

BTW, everyone says it's a shame I didn't get cast in the Medora North Dakota Community Theater production because I was made to play Opheia. I acknowledge it was a misstep on my part to audition for the role dripping wet, but I was simply trying to demonstrate my method acting dedication to the character by (only partially) drowning myself.

Anyhow . . . back to the mouse.

Playing the rodent required different theatrical skills. For example, making cartoon costumed character eye contact with with kids is not the same thing as human eye contact. For example, one particularly tall cartoon character's plastic head is nothing but empty space so the human inner working actually looks out through the costume's cleverly disguised belly button.

As for the mouse costume, well, I needed to bend at the knees and place both palms on my mouse thighs, thereby pushing my cartoon tush and tail way out. No big deal, right?

Wrong!

You see that cartoon mouse tush costume weighs a ton and the awkward stance meant that I was essentially in twerk position eight hours a day. I don't care if you are in the best shape of your life, to work the twerk that long is tantamount to torture. My chiropractor had never seen a lower spine in worse shape. She said my tail bone felt like an actual tail.

So the next time my director told me to do the bent knee stance, I told him that his direction was, "Toxic to my coccyx!"

I was promptly "recast" as a concession stand worker. Nothing against popcorn, but this is not the compromised-dream-acting job for which I signed up.

This is one giant misunderstanding and I'm hopeful that in the near future I will once again sparkle in the role of cartoon character, preferably princess but rodent will do.

Until then, I'm suing the theme park for twerkers' comp.