Disney said it best with its classic "Cinderella." With a fairy godmother, a few animated mice and a Prince Charming, a Technicolor gloss coated the title heroine's tale of triumph. When all was said and done, Cinderella had proved the veracity of the three words that combine to form the holy grail of hopes: Dreams come true.
This is the message that Alex Kuhn, browsing the carpeted aisles of Hollywood Video, gleaned from the movie as a kid. At 16, she has a delicately proportioned face that looks about six or seven years too mature for her age, but then the innocently excited words start tumbling from her mouth. Yes, she is just 16.
"I have dreams too, and I might have my dreams come true some day," she says, explaining why the movie resonates with her.
She wants to be an actress, though, not a princess. "And maybe a singer if I get lucky," she adds, "like Jennifer Love Hewitt is an actress and a singer at the same time."
The cliche might otherwise provoke an eye-rolling, "Oh, please," reaction, albeit one you'd try to hide with a humoring smile and head nod. An actress? How original. Jennifer Love Hewitt as a role model for career aspirations? No comment.
But staring into the teenager's unabashedly optimistic eyes on this Saturday morning, her candid willingness to share these dreams so palpable, the negative reaction dissipates. Kuhn's enthusiasm is refreshing, especially standing here between the new releases and the kids' section - where sex sirens meet baby dolls - on the cusp that separates G-rated hope from R-rated pessimism.
She's taking drama classes, learning how to memorize lines and come in on cue, planning, maybe, to move to New York one day. She believes her dreams will come true. Just like so many other people in this town.
Chapter 1: The road ahead
If every Cinderella story needed a ball, Anthony Scott's would have two.
__First, there's football, a game that the Charlottesville High School senior has been playing for nine years. At last fall's homecoming game, Scott was the star of the show. As the clock wound down in the fourth quarter, a tight score registering on the board and a rival team member running for the end zone, the CHS free safety wasn't about to let everything disappear.
"I made a tackle that saved us from losing the game," Scott remembers calmly, with a cool hint of pride showing through. The thrill of the memory doesn't quite permeate his game face as he stands guard, clad in a khaki and green uniform, in front of a shoe display at Downtown Athletic. "When I made that tackle, it was like I knew I made the difference in whether we won the game or not."
Second, there's the other ball - the one that high school students commonly call "prom" - coming up in May. While Scott had his glory on the field, it's at prom where his talents really will shine. Getting a head start on his dreams to go into fashion design, he has designed his own tuxedo - not to mention the dresses for two of his friends.
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Future fashion designer Anthony Scott dresses to impress at Downtown Athletic.
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He has a strong admiration for the Sean John clothing line and wants to design casual and sportswear professionally. In fact, he already has five designs up his sleeve. He declines to draw his cream and white prom tux on the spot, though, because, he says, it's too complicated to draw a quick sketch.
"It's not very common that you find someone really into football and fashion design at the same time," Scott says. But at the same time, he says that most of the guys he knows who are really into football "don't have anything to fall back on."
While he awaits word from several colleges, Scott says that he might attend Piedmont Community College for a few semesters to raise his SAT scores. After getting an undergraduate degree, he'll pursue fashion. In the meantime, his mom has been very supportive of his goals.
"She always believes that I can do whatever I put my mind to," Scott says. "She's really backing me up on the fashion design thing."
It sounds like he only needs to convince one more person: his prom date and best friend since sixth grade.
"I tried to talk my date into me designing her dress," he says. "But she's already got it picked out."
Chapter 2: In the works
Behind the counter at the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library, Jeff Melkerson stands out from some of his older colleagues in a lime green and blue striped button-up. Like some kind of Buddy Holly/Weezer hybrid, his hair is pushed up off his head a few inches in a tussled mass and thick-rimmed rectangular glasses frame his eyes. Politics Prof. Larry Sabato once gave the 1995 Univesity grad a sticker for holding an elevator for him. Now, Melkerson maintains an easy rapport with people who are checking out books he's never read.
"That's a really nice shirt. I'm really into that shirt," he tells Walter, a patron in a red, white and blue checked cowboy shirt.
To a pair of Londoners who love the library, he responds with a simple, "Well, I'm glad you feel that way," before suggesting the foreigners check out Reed's Gap for a good hike.
And when he's not checking out a Stephen Ambrose book to someone or giving aid to a tourist, Melkerson plays a grocery cart.
One who has only ever pushed a grocery cart before wonders how the verb "play" is applicable. But it's an easy switchover for the mellow, lanky librarian. Filled with pots and pans, an old muffler and ironing board legs, the cart becomes an instrument, Melkerson becomes a musician and then you've got one half of the band Meat Excellence ("Like, 'haha, you're a Vegan, we're Meat Excellence," he elaborates).
"For a big city, that would be no big deal," he says of the two-man band that plays occasionally on the Downtown Mall. "That would be just par for the course."
In Charlottesville, though, a man playing a grocery cart, even if he is accompanied by someone on a trumpet, trombone, mega-phone or harmonica, is a little freaky, Melkerson says.
"A lot of talented people do move onto bigger cities," he says. "You have to decide if you're going to be able to grow artistically if you stay in a town this size."
As a self-described B- or C-list musician in Charlottesville, Melkerson is stalking the periphery of the punk/Goth music scene. He records solo material is his bedroom under the name Smyrna Skim. His other band, the Civil War Re-enactors, plays in a basement.
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"We're exclusive to 700A Rock Creek Road," Melkerson jokes. "We're not good enough for Tokyo Rose yet," he adds, a little more seriously, about the possibility of playing at the sushi bar.
Melkerson is matter-of-fact about the odds of his endeavors panning out professionally but sincere in his love for music despite them.
"I don't think that anything I do is going to be commercially viable," he says. "When I play music, I feel like I'm giving something to people. I want them to have it, I don't want them to pay for it."
The mentality matches his library job where he is, after all, giving away art all day long.
At the other end of the counter from him is Connie Harkins, an older woman with a motherly face. The fellow librarian fell in love with Nancy Drew mystery books as a young reader, but it's a memoir that she wants to write one day, in memory of her son, David, who died of a heart malfunction at age 29.
As a first grader, David "wrote about how he would be married with four kids and run for president of the U.S.," she says with a wistful smile from behind the counter.
In the spirit of what Harkins believes David would have accomplished, she would like to project her book into the future and imagine what else her son would have achieved in his lifetime.
"Since he was in the State Department, I wonder where he would be right now with the world situation and what he would have done and been involved in," she says.
Harkins admits that writing the memoir might be too hard because of the heavy emotions involved, but she believes the memoir would be motivational.
She's thinking of writing it for a high school audience.
"My son had a very interesting life," she says. "I think he just showed that you can make your dreams come true."
Chapter 3: A happy ending
At Spring Court Days, an arts and crafts festival near the Downtown Mall, a patchwork of white tents and green grass plots quilts the small square of Lee Park.
Beneath the tents are objects of wood, metal, clay and glass that creative hands have fashioned into baubles and crafts. For Becky Garrity, the art is pitchers and bowls painted in grainy, muted tones of light green, yellow and orange. For Kim Crizet the art is whimsical and bright, wood and metal cut to form angels, jewelry and magic wands.
Both made lifestyle changes to pursue their goals of opening a business where they make and display their art.
Garrity majored in sculpture and dynamics at the College of William & Mary. She didn't pursue it after graduation, though, and instead daydreamed about what her life would be like as a potter.
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Alex Kuhn ponders her acting hopes at Hollywood Video.
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"I remember when my kids were little, I had a picture of myself in the basement throwing pots and have the kids coming down to visit me," Garrity says.
Five years ago she finally decided to "settle in and make it a business."
And although Garrity does feel like she's living happily ever after, her dreams are far from complete.
"I would really like to grow with pottery as I get to be a more accomplished thrower," she says, slowly scanning the array of dishes on the table in front of her.
A few tents away, Crizet, wearing an "inspiration pin" - one of her own fanciful metal creations - explains that she opened an antiques store when she realized how unhappy she was at her office job.
"I felt like I was pounding a square peg into a round hole," she says.
When the store closed, the Fluvanna County resident took up her current profession of burning through metal with a plasma cutter, building items like the sturdy "Big Butt Bench" and using her 15 cats and seven dogs for inspiration of other pieces.
She has even turned a put-down someone once paid her into a positive piece of art. Crizet created "Bad Hair Angels" after a waitress in a restaurant once said to her, "I can't believe you have the nerve to wear your hair out in public like that."
It's this lifestyle that makes her happy. For a lot of people, Crizet says, "You know you're not happy at what you're doing, but you're too scared to make a change. You just have to go out on a limb and do it"
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