Kitty

I had one of those strange little full circle theater moments at Matilda. An actress named Kitty Balay from PCPA came up to me and asked, “Are you Erik Austin?” I said yes while my brain immediately started searching its filing cabinets trying to figure out what was happening. The funny part is that I actually took classes from Kitty when I was in high school, which was approximately a zillion years ago, so the idea that she would recognize me now was definitely not on my bingo card. Then she complimented me on Oliver!, which was incredibly cool and meant a lot coming from someone I knew from way back then. Of course, instead of simply accepting a nice compliment like a normal human being, I immediately started wondering afterward if I acted weird. Did I say enough? Too much? Did I look surprised? Did I make sense? Welcome to my brain, where even a lovely compliment can receive a full postproduction analysis. I might send her a little DM just to say how nice it was seeing her and how much the compliment meant to me. Hopefully that is charming and not further evidence that I am, in fact, weird.

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