Watching “Glee” reminded me of this
My sixth grade Thanksgiving was average, at best. The usual grandmother’s house gathering with family members who crack puns at the dinner table and can’t agree on football or TLC reruns. My friend, however, went to New York and returned with a novel, a t-shirt, and a new favorite musical. Wicked, based on a novel of the same name by Gregory Maguire, pushed Making Fiends and those odd Target caricatures aside to become the hottest topic in the grade. The recording company probably made a few hundred dollars from us alone. We read the novel (and its sequels) from cover to cover, memorized each breath that Idina Menzel took on the soundtrack, and quoted song lyrics in everyday conversation. Wicked was the ultimate middle school epidemic. So when the Fabulous…