My best friend and I auditioned for Disney Channel our junior year of high school. Well, a Disney-affiliated company. (A Disney-wanna-be of sorts.) It was a company that promised to make you a star if you paid them $10,000 for five acting lessons. Okay, I’ll admit it, it was a scam.
Our Kit-Kat commercials were polished to perfection; our hearts were truly into selling the “chocolate moment” with exaggerated expressions and hand movements. We were definitely the oldest ones at auditions, and we got to meet the guy who played Zeke on Wizards of Waverly Place. He even did his signature arm-flailing walk which was pretty cool.
My hands shook as I walked up to the woman I would be auditioning for, and I tripped about ten times in the short distance it took to reach her. I described the “crunchy sensation of chocolate melting in your mouth” to the best of my abilities and waited for her feedback. She told me that I had done an amazing job and then asked my father if he would be willing to put $10,000 into the first set of acting lessons.
We didn’t reply to the callback.
Yes, the audition was a scam, but my best friend and I agreed that we were glad that we had put ourselves out there and taken a risk. We challenged ourselves to take part in something new and exciting.
To those of you that are reading this and thinking that it was immature of us to do the audition as high schoolers, you are absolutely correct. It was a young thing to do, but that doesn’t mean that I would take it back.
As I prepare to turn 18 this upcoming week, it’s becoming more important to me than ever to remain young even as I grow older. When I’m 30, I still want to have room in my life to take a break from stress and just have fun. When I’m 50, I want to have traveled to all of the seven continents. When I’m 70 years old, I still want to go out dancing.
I do things that may be silly in order to remind myself that there is still good in the world and laughs to be had, and that shouldn’t make me be considered childish — it makes me alive.
I take risks in my life because they make me who I am. If I didn’t risk tripping, I’d never walk; if I didn’t risk falling in love, I’d be alone. Risk-taking can be scary, but it is also crucial for discovering the most important parts of life: the friends, the soulmates, the passions and the adventures. All that I’ve discovered through risk-taking makes every bit of uncertainty worth it. I dare anyone reading this article to step outside of their boundaries and comfort zones for a day. Take a risk and see how it makes you feel because I can guarantee you that it is worth it. Take the risk!
