Casting Call!

My daughter has an agent.  It’s true, go ahead and laugh.  Many months ago, when Lila was a teeny babe, I submitted her picture to an agency and they accepted her.  This wasn’t entirely my idea – I must implicate my dear friend Ann in this as well.  Hey – we have awesome looking baby girls, both rare red-headed, blue-eyed beauties, so don’t be judgy!

Anyway, Monday night, we both got a call about a Tuesday afternoon audition for a TV commercial, and off we went.  (We were scheduled at separate times, and Lila and I went first.  This will be important later.)  Now, there are basically two phases to this audtion I want to describe.  First, there’s the interminable-waiting-in-the-hall-for-our-name-to-be-called phase.  This was your basic nightmare, but at least it was fun for Lila.  Then comes the actual audtion phase, which lasts about 3 minutes and yet somehow was even more unpleasant.

Phase 1:  The Hallway.

As I’m planning the trip in to Brighton yesterday morning, I remember reading in the “rules” the agency sent that it’s not cool to be too early to these things.  So, I aim for 10 minutes early – professional, yet not too eager.  I guess no one else bothered with these guidelines, because the tiny, humid hallway is already crowded with babies.  “I’ve been here for an hour!” chirps the too-perky lady I make the mistake of sitting next too. 

I sign in – #8 on the list, not too bad.  We sit down to wait quietly.  Anyone with an 11-month old baby knows I am just kidding, of course.  Lila wants to CRAWL!  Which I am more than happy to let her do.  Ann and I both told ourselves that we would do this modeling thing as long as the babies enjoyed it and not a moment longer.  And Miss Lila is in her glory in that hallway.  The place is crawling (ha, ha!) with babies, and Lila LOVES da babies.  We find a totally empty hallway around the corner and she has a blast crawling around with two boys about her age, while I chat with two very nice parents.  A fourth parent joins us for a moment, but then apparently she decides her son will get “too dirty”, so they go back to sit down.  On the crowded bench.  With all the sweaty parents holding squirmy babies.

This brings me to my general analysis of the parents.  Now, I met some really nice parents, parents who I’m sure I’d be happy to spend time with even in another crowded hallway, although a park would be better.  However, I also observed two types of parents I DO NOT want to be like or, in fact, even be around.  Type 1 is the clueless, classless, I want-my-kid-to-be-famous-so-I-can-live-vicariously type.  There were plenty of these on the scene.  These are the people who blatantly ignored the guidelines and rules the rest of us were courteous enough to follow.  The rule about not bringing a stroller inside because of the small space, for one.  Numerous people had strollers, which was bad enough, but the lady with the DOUBLE STROLLER took the prize on that one.  As Lila and I were leaving, we caught the tail end of this scene: “OK, everyone clear the way!  Double stroller coming through!”  This by definition means this lady was breaking another rule: Don’t bring other children with you.  Get a babysitter.  Or don’t go.  But there she was, so you may be thinking, well, what was she supposed to do at that point?  Carry both twins and leave the stroller where it was until it was time to leave?  Ummm… yes.

Other parents I put in this category are the parents who waited and waited for over an hour while their babies cried!  I didn’t see this myself, because I was lucky enough to be in and out fairly quickly, but Ann reported later that by the time she was there, many babies were full-on crying.  Go home!  If your baby is miserable, go home!  Your gross baby isn’t going to get chosen for this commercial anyway!  Go home!  Luckily, Ann found the same empty hallway we did and her baby Charlotte had a similar blast crawling around and playing.  Which brings me to the parents Ann met during her interminable-wait-in-the-hall…

These parents fall into the other category, Type 2 – the snooty, my-child-is-perfect-and-also-I-am-better-than-you type.  Ann sat near a gaggle of three of these moms and their obnoxious babies, who swarmed Charlotte and stole her toys.  One mom asked the other mom, “Where did you get those toys?” and the other mom nonchalantly replied, “Oh, I don’t know whose toys these are.”  Implying, “And I don’t care.”  But Ann’s favorite mom was the one who let her baby take another one of Charlotte’s toys.  Ann told the mom, “We brought plenty of toys, so go ahead and borrow that one!”  To which the mom replied by taking a sanitized wipe out of her bag and wiping Charlotte’s “cooties” off, while simultaneously adding a pleasant alcohol-reek to the musty hallway air.  Nice.

OK, back to the story.  Phase 2:  The Audition

We wait in the hall.  I know we’re up next because the pushy bitch who signed in ahead of me after I held the door open for her and her stroller is in there now.  The door opens, the woman with the list comes out.  “LEE-la?” she calls.  I say “It’s LI-la.”  Huge eye-roll, followed by “Oh, LI-la?!?!?”  As if it’s a totally incomprehensible name and how could I expect her to know?  WTF?  It’s spelled L-I-L-A.  It’s Lila.  I get it that sometimes ‘i’ can have the long ‘e’ sound, but don’t you usually go for the obvious pronunciation first?  Anyway, not important, except to establish that this woman is already annoyed with her job today, and we’re only the 8th baby so far!  There are probably a hundred!

So we go inside, they ask me to plop Lila on the floor and they put the Busy Ball toy in front of her.  A different lady pushes a ball through a hole, it makes a noise, rolls down a circular chute, and rolls out the other side.  Lila looks at the ball and looks around at the three strangers pointing a camera at her.  The lady says “Can’t she crawl?”  Umm, yes, indeed she can.  In fact, she just spent the last 45 minutes crawling her ass off in your hallway!  Give her a minute, bitch!  She wants me to “get her to crawl.”  So I say, “OK, Lila, the nice lady wants you to crawl after the ball!”  No, actually, of course I don’t say that, because she’s ELEVEN MONTHS OLD and doesn’t follow directions all that well.  But, Lila does actually crawl after the ball on her own, picks it up, stuffs it down the chute, and crawls after it again.  And then we’re done.  “Don’t call us, we’ll call you” or something to that effect.

Back out the door, through the hallway, out to the car, home.  Will Lila be in a commercial for the Busy Ball?  I seriously doubt it.  Did she have fun chasing babies down a hot hallway yesterday?  You bet she did.