a facebook post on annie get your gun's effect on my development

I mostly cut and paste here from my facebook timeline. It seems more fruitful that way.

when I was 4, my parents took me to the Newton High senior class play - Annie Get Your Gun. I remember this play because I had a world class melt down - I'm sure I melted down several other times, but this is the one that sticks in my memory: I really believed that I should be on the stage - "hey, I'm supposed to be up there!" Where'd I get that Idea? I even remember the reason for my melt down and it was perfectly logical to me - though befuddling to my parents. I also remember seeing the play and hearing the songs - so I must have gotten it together. All these years Annie Get Your Gun has been a touchstone for me. It's the story of a girl, Annie, who leaves her gun at home, while going on a duck hunting field trip with her classmates. No one wants to loan her or share their gun with her - she as to go back and get her own gun - hopefully returning in time for the duck hunting finals. Along the way she visits the emperor of China (disguised as a dance hall bouncer); wins a pie eating contest; befriends an orphan (who grows up to become James Garfield, our greatest president) - when she finally gets home she discovers that she hadn't forgotten her gun at all. So she hurries back, via balloon, to the duck hunting finale, where an outpouring of charity bestows on her five more guns - which she fires simultaneously to bring home the Mallard Medal. The musical ends with "
Any farce you can make, I can make broader".