Madness on the Inside (Out)

Saturday, I was in two shows with the team, performing our latest routine to Ella Fitzgerald's It's All Right With Me. The shows were the two halves of the Victoria Dance Connection's Year End Performance at the Royal Theatre. At the end of the second show, we were hanging out backstage getting ready to leave when Geoff told us a little story involving a styrofoam cup. I was drinking some water from one such cup at the moment. Apparently, his friend's dad used to turn styrofoam cups inside out during his college days. It seems it's possible to flatten the styrofoam enough to give it the flexibility to turn the whole cup inside out without breaking. It just requires a lot of patience and boredom... and possibly some insanity, as I found out.

Now, if you tell me a story like that, it's quite possible I'm going to take that as a personal challenge. So, having finished my water, I started in on the cup, flattening the top and slowly working my way down. Geoff had already started on his, but would later give up when he got a little impatient and broke his by rushing. When we were all ready to go, we headed out to celebrate and hang out. Personal challenge and all, I had my cup in hand. And so was the case for the rest of the night. When I said it required a lot of patience, I wasn't kidding. It's slow going, flattening styrofoam cups. After flattening on and off for a couple hours last night, I was only about one third of the way into the cup. A little more work today and I'm a little over half done, though it does go faster the lower you get since the diameter decreases. The cup is starting to get pretty flexible and I've started widening the top in preparation for inside-out-ing it.

I have to say, it's pretty tough on the thumbs. They're starting to feel like I've been playing with Lego for a long time. I can see I still have a lot of flattening and working the cup to increase its flexibility still, but I'm not going to give up. I'll report again soon.

That is all.