Annette Kuusinen and AJ Kuusinen

[00:06] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: My name is Annette Kuusinen I'm 54 years old. Today is July 12, 2024. I'm in Brattleboro, Vermont, and I'm having a conversation with my child.

[00:16] AJ KUUSINEN: I'm AJ Kuusinen I am 18, and I'm here talking with my mom. How did you start color guard?

[00:27] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: When I was 13 years old, my middle school band director held up a poster that was for valley fever drum and Buglecore's B corps. And quite honestly, I did not like her very much. And she said, I got this flyer for valley fever. If you ask me, they placed too much emphasis on marching and not enough on playing. But, you know, if you guys want to go, here's the information. And actually, I was sort of indifferent about going, but my best friend Gail convinced me to go, and the moment they put a rifle in my hands and I started spinning it, I was in love, and I quit band, like, very quickly. I've probably finished out the school year, and I never played the flute again and was obsessed with color guardhouse from that moment on.

[01:19] AJ KUUSINEN: Could you explain what a rifle is?

[01:22] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: So, color guard is? The. It would be a wooden rifle. It's like old fashioned military stuff where they guarded the flag. They protected the flag. Color guard has evolved into an art form where you spin and you dance and you toss and do all kinds of really cool stuff with a rifle. And I did that for. I performed for ten years, and then I coached for another ten. It was. Was a really, really big part of my life. All right, do you want to tell me about how you started circus? Like, what do you remember about that? You were pretty little.

[01:57] AJ KUUSINEN: Yeah. So you were at the time helping out at shows. So the first time I saw a circus show, I have no memory of it, but I was nine months old, the first circus show I saw, and I feel, like, pretty quickly after I could talk, I was like, I want to do this. And I remember every single summer from, like, four years to, like, six years, every single time we went to a circus show, I was like, mom, I want to do this. And it wasn't until I was seven during the summer I said that to a show. And my mom was like, all right, you're old enough. And I did a circus camp, and I fell in love with Neca and circus, and I took a class, and it was in this really, really small room because of this specific coach that I really, really wanted to, like, work, like, take another class with her because she had been my coach at camp, and I loved her, and I just remember being so excited to not only work with that coach again, but to do circus. Like, it was all I would talk about, right.

[03:13] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: It was trapeze only class.

[03:16] AJ KUUSINEN: And trapeze is this like metal. It's kind of like a swing in a way. It's a metal bar, and then there's two fabric pieces on it, and then ropes attach the fabric pieces that go up. And I was learning static trapeze, which is two pointed. So it makes like a really long rectangle sort of shape when it's hanging right.

[03:42] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Did you fall in love with trapeze at first, or was it just, were there other apparatuses that you liked?

[03:50] AJ KUUSINEN: I think at first it was just every aspect of circus that was so eye catching, and I had such a desire to try it. Like, I really wanted to try clowning. I really wanted to try all the stuff in the air that people were doing. All of it was so interesting to me, and I just wanted to try it so bad that I just was curious to try everything. And I've tried a lot of things in the. This is the beginning of my 12th year doing circus, so I've tried a lot of things.

[04:31] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: One of my favorite stories about your circus career is the very first time you got to perform at the stroll of the heifers. I remember you walked into the parade and you were nine, maybe you were pretty young. You had just officially been said, okay, you're ready to perform for a crowd. And after the stroll of the heifers, there's all the carts and the booths, and there's so much fun stuff to do. And you finished the parade, and you went to the performance rig, and you weren't due there for 2 hours, but you wouldn't leave. You were so excited to be with the circus people and hang out with them. And you were young enough that I didn't. And I didn't know these people. Like, I wasn't comfortable letting you hang out with these strangers or dumping you off on these strangers that I like. Pretty much missed the whole expo thing because I had to hang out at the rig so you could be on there. It was pretty cool to see you perform for the first time because I don't think people realize, I think professional circus people make it look really easy. And until you try it yourself, you don't realize it is so stinking hard. And knowing what I know now, after, you know, trying trepies for a few years now, still being very much a beginner is how good you were back then, like, how much strength you had and how remarkable it was playing on the monkey bars totally paid off.

[05:58] AJ KUUSINEN: I was on the monkey bars every single day. Cause you wouldn't let me go to circus camp until I was seven. So I just played on the monkey bars. I was always on them.

[06:10] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: I remember misses Manning saying to me that she would allow you to do some things on the bars that no other kids could do because she knew you were safe and that the other kids were like, nope, only AJ.

[06:21] AJ KUUSINEN: Yep. I was. There was a, like, on the monkey bars. There was, like, the highest point she would like anyone else, any other kid who tried to get up there, she was like, nope, don't try it. AJ got it. He can do it.

[06:34] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: So funny.

[06:34] AJ KUUSINEN: Yeah.

[06:37] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: What is your. What's the biggest lesson you've learned from circus?

[06:44] AJ KUUSINEN: I think. Ooh. I think the biggest lesson I've learned from circus would probably be that there's something to be expressed no matter what you're feeling. And even if you don't have a word for it, letting your body just explore the feeling, but not needing to use words or try and figure out what it is, but just allowing your body to express it. Circus is really helpful with that. And I struggle a lot with, like, figuring out. Figuring out exactly what I'm feeling. So by expressing it through arthem, it just gets it through my body faster and then I'm moving. So it's also better for myself when I'm feeling low. And I've learned that there's also just people everywhere at the circus community. It's so huge, and I'm currently right now interning there and, like, trying to become a teacher there.

[07:54] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: So.

[07:55] AJ KUUSINEN: But there's so many, like, it's a really wonderful community that really has your back and, like, I knew that before, like, being, like, on the road to being a coach, but, like, I, like, know and feel that now that I'm a part of the team and, like, helping out, which is really, really wonderful.

[08:16] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Yeah. The. I think that Neca's a really special place because you are perfectly acceptable and enough from the moment you walk in the door. I really, really love that about the space. When I started trying circus at 48, man, was that. Wow. That was my first class. When I first started. I don't think you could appreciate how hard it really is. But I was also a middle aged, out of shape woman, right? So not a ton of upper body strength. That's where the woman piece comes in handy. And I still felt successful in my classes. I was still celebrated in my classes. And as someone who comes from the precision drill team world, learning that everything counts, even the ugly stuff. You know, I remember trying to get this trick called Mermaid twirl. And to achieve the trick, I literally just had to lift my bum off the bar, off the trapeze bar an inch, just an inch. And I didn't quite have the strength to lift myself up that inch. And I was close and I worked on this for weeks and weeks and weeks. And the first time I did it, I'm on a really low bar. I'm, you know, two 3ft off the ground at a very safe height. So I'm working without a coach on it, but the coach is standing nearby and the first time I did it, it was so hideous and I fought for it and I was flailing and it was ugly, but I did it. And the coach, Victoria said to me, she just caught it out of the corner of her eye. She knew I'd been working on it for weeks and she celebrates and made this really, really big deal. And I looked at her and was like, that was the ugliest thing ever. And she said to me, yeah, but you did it. It all counts. And that interaction really, really shifted my perspective, particularly coming from this precision based world where I, you know, a crummy toss doesn't count because it wasn't perfect. And what a huge shift for me personally in that it all counts. Everything you do, it counts, right? It's a step in the direction you want to go whether you achieved something or you learned something from not achieving it. So that's been a really huge impact for me personally at Necca.

[10:40] AJ KUUSINEN: What is the biggest lesson you learned as a blue devil?

[10:45] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: So a blue devil is blue devil's drum and bugle corps. It's like professional marching band. I joined the Blue Devils at 16 and currently the Blue Devils are the winningest drum corps in the world. They have 21 world titles. But when I was a member, we were going for our 7th and when I was there, we were in a dry patch and we all, five years that I marched, we never won world championships, which is the biggest dry spell the Blue Devils have had. There aren't very many people that were part of five seasons and didn't win world championships. And my second season there in 88, we were undefeated all season and we were expected to win. We literally went into the season. I can remember our director saying to us that morning that, you know, I woke up this morning and thought, going to go in DCI, I was a naive 18 year old kid. I believed him, right? And they had changed the structure of the competition, and we didn't know we had lost prelims. And so at the awards, we're all standing there on the field, and we are expected to be crowned the world champion. And we were third. Like, we were barely paying attention when they called our name. We were like, wait, did they call our name? Oh, my God. Like, what's going on? And the devastation of that lost was tremendous, tremendous, tremendous, tremendous. And for the corps members, like, with the organization, it took us a whole year to work through that. Emotionally, 1989 was a terrible season, and I hated most of the members because they were arrogant and disenchanted from losing the year before. But after, I don't know, maybe seven, 8910 years, somewhere in there. After a while, as I process, I learned that I can't wish that loss away because it changed me fundamentally. It took me from being a young person who placed my value in, what, the opinion of six judges in green shirts, what they thought of my performance versus what I thought of my performance. Right? So as much as I would love to have that world championship, I can't wish for it, because I wouldn't be who I am today. And it impacted the way I coached and the programs I ran it, you know, impacted the way I raised you kids in that I'm just really not a competitive person, especially in something that's adjudicated. It just. It doesn't matter. So that. Working through that lesson. But it was a long, long lesson. I can remember this one time, our friend Mac taught the group that beat us at world championships, and maybe five, six years after the loss, Mack said something really flippant, and I told him off and had to leave. I was so mad at him for bringing it up. It took me a really long time to not be pissed off about that.

[14:04] AJ KUUSINEN: Yeah.

[14:04] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: But now, you know, a million years later, I can say I am who I am because of that loss. So it's not a bad thing, even though, you know, I guess bad things, you learn from bad things. I guess losing isn't the worst thing that could happen to a person either.

[14:22] AJ KUUSINEN: Yeah.

[14:30] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Why don't you tell me a favorite story about me?

[14:53] AJ KUUSINEN: I'm gonna go with the thunder story. You know, that's a really. That's one of my. That's a good. It's not really a story. I guess it's more memory than a story. We were in the car. Was it all four of us, or was it three of us?

[15:14] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: I don't think Sam was with us.

[15:15] AJ KUUSINEN: It's just you, me, and all three of us. So it was my mom, my dad, and myself driving home from eating dinner, and it was raining, and there was a thunderstorm nearby, and, like, we were just starting to, like, drive through it, and we get this really big thunder, like, directly in front of us on the road. My mom's driving, and she points at it and starts laughing as a response to how big the thunder is. But her laugh was really funny. So we all started bursting out laughing and making, like, mocking it because it was really funny.

[15:58] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: I sounded like a french person. I was like, oh, I don't know.

[16:02] AJ KUUSINEN: Why it was so funny. It's something that we still quote to this day, and it happened, like, a year ago. It is. I don't know why so funny.

[16:13] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: I laughed like a french person. Not sure where that came from.

[16:16] AJ KUUSINEN: It was so funny. And it's. We have a lot of those little moments. A lot that. And I really cherish that we still continue to have them after. Even now, I'm becoming, like, you know, a young adult, and I'm starting to do adult stuff and do things more on my own. So the fact that we still have those moments makes me really happy.

[16:36] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: That's funny. That's a funny story. Do you remember this summer that you fell in love with drum corps?

[16:48] AJ KUUSINEN: 2015?

[16:50] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Right?

[16:51] AJ KUUSINEN: Yeah. So we went to Allentown that year.

[16:56] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Right? That was DCI, and we had been bringing you since you were three.

[17:00] AJ KUUSINEN: No, but we went to Allentown.

[17:02] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: No, they can't. They were here in the northeast.

[17:04] AJ KUUSINEN: Northeast. Where was that?

[17:06] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Well, they went to Tanglewood, and we went to Rhode Island.

[17:09] AJ KUUSINEN: Rhode island. So the blue Devils, this is 2015. We went to Rhode island because the blue Devils were there, and so because my parents were part of the organization, and they know the coaches, and they know some, like, some of the kids are their friends or people. Their march with kids or, you know, students. They taught in the younger corps that are now in the advanced core. So it was really fun meeting a lot of people. And my mom knew it was one of her friends kids was in the guard, and so my mom went up and talked to her, and I asked if I could spin her flag, and she's like, yeah. And then my mom was like, yeah, go just, like, go find some empty space, like, over there and go, like, play with it. And so. So the two of them could talk. So I'm over there, and this very nice guy, this very nice color guard member, he starts showing me how to use the flag and doing, like, just some fun tricks and such with it, and just, like, having fun with me, and I just fell in love with how charismatic and fun he was.

[18:31] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Chris Gilbreth is my hero.

[18:34] AJ KUUSINEN: So loved. Started falling in love with it. And like him as a performer, he was just so fun. And as a person, he was a really fun person to be around. And young me was just enamored by him. So we go to DCI, which is the final world championships. The world championships. And we came down really, really close to watch, and they ended up, blue Devils ended up winning that year. Afterwards, we got to hug him, and we got to see a photo of him, like, take a photo with him. And really, at the time, we kind of had it in our heads that we were the reason they won, because we got to see Chris before. We were like, we did this. Our little young brains were like, yep, this is. We did this. This is all our doing. And I fell in love with it from then on, all because of him.

[19:42] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Well, when we lived in California, the blue Devils have a. They have younger age programs. We left California when I was pregnant with you. We always, dad and I, both, being alumni of the Blue Devils, we expected that you guys would grow up in those young programs, which were programs that both dad and I taught. So the fact that you guys didn't have any color guard or drum corps marching band in your life at all. Yeah. Was weird for us. And, you know, we would go to DCI to see our best friends, and luckily, you know, Auntie Michelle lived there, and you guys. So we started going when you guys were really little. But I will forever be indebted to Chris Gelbreath and his. The way he made all of you guys, you kids, feel so special. And he is absolutely the reason you guys fell in love with the blue Devils. And, yeah, eternally grateful for that, because I could have seen it getting a little rough bringing you guys in the preteen years. If you hadn't fallen in love, that wouldn't.

[20:43] AJ KUUSINEN: Yeah, that would be hard.

[20:44] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: That would have been harder. Maybe you just would have hung out at Grampy's pool more.

[20:47] AJ KUUSINEN: Yeah. Can you tell me a story about how your coaches impacted you?

[20:56] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Yes. I'm super lucky that many of the people who coached me when I was young also have become friends in my adult life, which is super, super cool. But TJ Doucet is not just remarkable in the field of color guard, but such a remarkable human. She's a no nonsense Bostonian. She probably has an eidetic memory. And there are so many tjisms that come out of my mouth when I stopped performing, and I started coaching my own group. Every single phrase I said to my students came from her. I was like, do I not have an original thought about color coding? They were all tjisms. But one of the best lessons I got from her, and you will probably roll your eyes when I say this to you, is that it's not what you say, but how you say it. And I've been saying that to you and Sam your whole lives, and it's just such an important lesson that you can tell somebody to jump off a cliff, but if you use the right words, you'll get the tone that you intend to have it. But one of the other things that TJ says that isn't my. She actually didn't say it during my years. She says it to the more current kids now, is that desire overcomes destiny. And I really love the idea that you have some say in your destiny, that it's not pre written and that you're.

[22:35] AJ KUUSINEN: You get to choose.

[22:36] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: You get to choose. I think that's super, super cool. But she's also. One of my favorite things about TJ is if you watch her in rehearsal and, you know, I talked about her eidetic memory, and she sees everything. It is remarkable that the kids can run a three minute piece of the show, and she has a list of 25 things she saw, and she can remember them all and regurgitate those back to the kids. It's absolutely remarkable. And as a human outside in the world, she's a little disorganized and a little scattered. And I can't tell you how many years she literally asked me to babysit her cat just about as they're getting off the buses to go on a five week tour kind of things. And maybe she knew I'd say yes. But it's, you know, I love that she is such a dichotomy.

[23:21] AJ KUUSINEN: Right.

[23:21] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: She's brilliant and sees everything and knows so much. And her personal life is a little.

[23:28] AJ KUUSINEN: She's a little all over the place when she's just TJ.

[23:31] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Right, right. But I just adore that. Those things she's taught me and the influence she has. And she's a really good friend now, too.

[23:42] AJ KUUSINEN: Yeah.

[23:46] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Do you have a story that might surprise me?

[23:49] AJ KUUSINEN: No, I can't think of any.

[24:11] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: That's good.

[24:14] AJ KUUSINEN: I tell you a lot about anything shocking, circus wise, that's happened, you know, about. Because I was young enough that I've always been around. Yeah.

[24:23] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: I'll never forget the time that we were at Austin, and it was the first session of a new class, and Aaron was doing evaluations. And you were primarily a trapeze artist. And this class was multiple apparatuses, aerial fabric. I don't know what else was in the class.

[24:44] AJ KUUSINEN: I don't remember.

[24:45] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: And the story pertains to aerial fabric. And I dropped you off for class. And I came back, and as I was walking up to class, Michael, one of the other coaches, was outside and said, oh, AJ got a little bit hurt. I took care of him. They're fine. Like, oh, okay. Didn't think much of it. And I walk in and I watch the end of your class. And then after class, Aaron comes up to me. Aaron's the coach, and we've been working with Erin three or four years at.

[25:10] AJ KUUSINEN: This point, a pretty long time at this point. She's, like, my main coach.

[25:13] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: We knew Erin really, really well at this point. And she comes up to me, she's like, okay. AJ was climbing. I was evaluating silk skills, and AJ climbed all the way to the top, and they had the wrong kind of footlock, and they started to fall and they caught themselves in their armpit with the fabric, and they have a major fabric burn. And I was like, I'm so glad I was not there to watch it. I mean, I do pride myself in being a pretty calm parent. I'm really glad I didn't see you fall. I choose to think of that you caught yourself. I don't think about you falling. I think about, you caught yourself. But the real chaos of that story started afterwards when we got home, because we didn't really know how to treat the burn. And it was pretty big.

[26:01] AJ KUUSINEN: Yeah. It went from above my armpit to below my armpit.

[26:06] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: It was like eight or ten inches, maybe.

[26:09] AJ KUUSINEN: It was pretty big, maybe longer. Like, it was huge. And it was really wide. And it was really painful.

[26:15] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Yeah. And, like, a friction burn is probably.

[26:18] AJ KUUSINEN: The best way fabric. A frictiony fabric burn. That was really bad.

[26:22] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: And we didn't. Because you were a trapeze person. We had no idea how to treat this. And what did dad do? What did dad put on it?

[26:29] AJ KUUSINEN: He put peroxide to clean it.

[26:32] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: That was so awful.

[26:33] AJ KUUSINEN: And it hurt. It burned so bad.

[26:36] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: And then we couldn't get, like, then how do you get it off? What do you do? How do you stop that pain? It was. We could. You could barely shower.

[26:42] AJ KUUSINEN: Yeah, because we were trying to get it ready so I could shower because I just had class. So I was all gross and sweaty in the summertime.

[26:49] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: That was awful.

[26:50] AJ KUUSINEN: It hurts so much.

[26:52] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Well, and then once it started hurting, how do. How did we get it to stop hurting? That was.

[26:56] AJ KUUSINEN: I think we parental failed it out.

[26:58] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: I know. That's like, parental fail. Sorry, kid. We've never done that again. We learned.

[27:05] AJ KUUSINEN: I don't go on fabric. I have not since the. I've never. I was never a big fan of fabric, but ever since that incident, I, like, never use it unless I'm, like, helping a kid on it or I'm, like, showing something basic or, like, working out, but that's about it.

[27:21] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Yeah. Um, the act you're writing the summer is that dance trap.

[27:26] AJ KUUSINEN: Yes.

[27:27] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Okay. Why did I think you said sling? That popped into my head.

[27:29] AJ KUUSINEN: I thought about doing sling, but sling when it's humid.

[27:34] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: True.

[27:35] AJ KUUSINEN: And hot and you're sweaty, it sticks to you. And that is just. I can't do that for the summer.

[27:39] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Yeah, that's yucky. You're right.

[27:40] AJ KUUSINEN: That's too hard to do during the summer and with the wind.

[27:43] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Yeah. It's hard enough just doing fitness training with them in the summer.

[27:47] AJ KUUSINEN: Yeah.

[27:50] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: How's your act for this summer coming along?

[27:53] AJ KUUSINEN: I'm still. I have an idea, but I can't tell if it's funny or not, so.

[27:59] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: I like your funny acts.

[28:01] AJ KUUSINEN: Yeah. So every summer, like, towards the end of summer to into the fall, I will. During the summer, I'll create a circus act, usually on trepies. This summer, I'm doing one on dance trapeze, which is a trapeze, except it's on one point, so it makes a triangle in the ropes rather than a square, and it spins because it's on one point, which I prefer. But I have not. I have not been training circus since December because I had a thumb injury. And then after, as my thumb injury was healing, I, like, stepped back from circus because it was not helping it heal. So I'm, like, having a hard time doing a really trick based routine just because I lost a lot of my strength and I need to still train more, so I'm going slower. But I had an idea for a clown act on dance trapeze where it was to another one bites the dust by queen.

[29:09] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: I love it.

[29:10] AJ KUUSINEN: And I've done another comedy act to a queen song before, so I was like, oh, maybe there's another queen song I could do a clown act to. And it came up when I was driving the other day, and I was like, this is a pretty good beat. It's not too fast. Cause I was just listening to any of the songs in my playlist to see how fast some of them were. And if it would work potentially. And it just. I was like, it'd be really funny. Instead of, like, getting, like. Cause in the song, it's like talking about getting shot if I'm killing a bug. So randomly, out of nowhere, on the first one, I whip out one of those plastic fly swatters and I just. Another one bites and does slam. Just rant every single time it happens throughout the act.

[30:06] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: That's funny.

[30:07] AJ KUUSINEN: And. Yeah. And I'm thinking that might be what I do because I was like, I don't. There's not really any other way to, like, pgfy the song. That's, you know. You know about people dying.

[30:18] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Yeah, no, that's.

[30:19] AJ KUUSINEN: Besides using, like, a parody.

[30:21] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: So is that a weird owl song?

[30:24] AJ KUUSINEN: Another one bites.

[30:26] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Does weird al do it?

[30:27] AJ KUUSINEN: Weird al does have a parody of it, but it's. Another one rides the bus.

[30:30] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Oh, that's right. That's funny.

[30:34] AJ KUUSINEN: But, yeah. So I have to get a fly swatter.

[30:37] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: All right.

[30:38] AJ KUUSINEN: Cause I don't think we only have our electric one. I'm not using that.

[30:42] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Thank you.

[30:43] AJ KUUSINEN: I don't wanna accidentally hit the button. That would suck. And also, it's heavy. I need to be able to hide it in my pocket.

[30:48] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Right. That's so, so funny. You should get Victoria to help you with that.

[30:52] AJ KUUSINEN: Yeah, she will be. I also want to do clown makeup. Just like, stereotypical white clown makeup, but, like, wear a more normal outfit because it will be hot and sunny in the summertime.

[31:04] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Yeah. Well, like, it's kind of the type of clowns that smirkus has, right? Yeah, that, like, nose and.

[31:10] AJ KUUSINEN: Yeah, not the, like, traditional big orange. Big orange red nose.

[31:16] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Right.

[31:16] AJ KUUSINEN: With white face. A little more simplified, but a little bit more modern clown.

[31:21] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Right.

[31:22] AJ KUUSINEN: Still colorful, still silly.

[31:24] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Well, and I also think one of my favorite moments was that last. Your last comedy number, that was the queen one. Oh, yeah, the queen one. Fat bottom girls. And you were big booty Judy. And her rear end kept getting in the way. Was so funny. But the little kids who got your number sitting around me giggling is my favorite thing. I love that. On the video I took of you, you can just hear the kids laughing so, so hard at that number, which is, I think sometimes it's hard to engage the kids. They don't understand that what you're doing is really, really hard. Even pretty. Right.

[31:59] AJ KUUSINEN: I had a lot of fun making the fat bottom girls act. I worked. It was choreographed by another person, by another one of the coaches at Necca. Her name's Victoria. She's really good at writing comedy. She's really good, clever at writing comedy acts.

[32:18] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: She likes to say 13 year old boy humor.

[32:20] AJ KUUSINEN: Mm hmm. So we came up with this idea to do fat bottom girls, and. But my character, to make it a clown act, I had a giant fake butt that kept getting stuck on my apparatus, which I used, like, a lira, which is like a giant metal hula hoop that's taped, and then you do tricks in it, and it hangs. So I was using that. So my butt kept getting stuck on that, and, like, that was the whole joke. And, like, there was wedgie jokes, and there was fart jokes, and it was really funny, and the kids really loved it. And that was one of my. That was the first time I performed a comedy act, like, during the summer. And it was so fun to make. And I have very vivid memories of when we were practicing it. We didn't have the butt yet, so we have a foam pit at NECA, and so we would just take two foam blocks from the pit, and I would wear these giant sweatpants over top my circus clothes, like my leggings or tights or whatever. And then we'd put the cubes in the sweatpants and tie it so that I had a makeshift fake butt. And then eventually, for performing it, we. My mom. My mom. I should say my mom. I didn't make it. My mom. My mom made me a fake butt.

[33:40] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: I've made a few costumes.

[33:41] AJ KUUSINEN: Yeah, my mom's made a lot of my. Made all of my Halloween costumes growing up and has helped a lot with circus costumes. When I decide to do weird shenanigan things.

[33:53] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Cosplay.

[33:54] AJ KUUSINEN: Cosplay.

[33:55] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: We've done a lot of weird cosplays.

[33:57] AJ KUUSINEN: Theater clothing. We do a lot of stuff like that. Are there any funny stories that we tell a lot that come to mind?

[34:22] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Well, when you were little, you were charming from the get go. I can remember you being about nine months old, and in that point in our lives, it was just you and me and Sam all day. We only been in Vermont a little while, and we didn't know very many people. And I remember I was eating something that you shouldn't have at nine months old. I'm not even sure what it was. It could have been a strawberry. It could have been a piece of candy. I really don't remember, but I remember you looking at me and batting your eyes, trying to get me to give you some, and I'm like, where did you learn this, kid?

[34:59] AJ KUUSINEN: Like my dad?

[35:02] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: I don't think so. I think it's innate. I just think it's your nature, you know? Like, Kelsey, our favorite babysitter, had the hardest time saying no to you. And I would be like, kelke, come on. Like, I say no to them all the time. Just. It's okay. Say no to them. But look at that face. Right? So when you were little, it's all the charming stories that you were never afraid to ask for something, and you were okay if people said no. But typically, because of your charming nature, people often said yes. You know, things like, you got to sit in the lifeguard's lap on the high, you know, chair. The lifeguard, the high lifeguard chair at the pool and that sort of thing. And you've also been dramatic from a very, very young age. So the story of you sticking your little head out the banister when I told you to go, you know, almost, what, three, four? Four. You know, I'm sure you needed to pick up a toy or, you know, put your pajamas in the hamper. It was a very, very minimal request. And you said, you're ruining my life, mom. And it's just like, wait till you're 16.

[36:19] AJ KUUSINEN: Here I am, 18.

[36:20] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Yeah. I think one of my specialties is remaining calm through most situations. Quite honestly, I am very. And not that I don't feel it, but I definitely am able to be even keel when the moment calls for it.

[36:39] AJ KUUSINEN: Yeah. I think the most nervous I've ever seen you was when I was. When I'd fallen off my bike coming home from swim lessons. And Sam, my older sibling, had made it home before me. They saw me on the ground. They're, like, limp. Like, I was not too far away from the house, but I was hurt enough that I couldn't walk. And they were smaller than me. I was bigger than them, so they couldn't. It's not like they could carry me and my bike and their bike all the way back home. So they biked home and told you. My mom told. And so you were, like, rushing to French and get in the car and come get me. And thankfully, someone we know is grandma was driving past and saw me and picked me up. And then another car drove up to your house to inform you that so and so's grandma had picked me up. And that, like, that they saw me and that I'm with someone safe. And that, like, just to let you know that, like, we're coming.

[37:42] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Right?

[37:43] AJ KUUSINEN: And I got there, and I remember how, like, nervous you were, because I had also recently, like, I've. That's not the only bike incident I had, but that was the first one. Wherever I. You're really frantic. I mean, the very first one. You were also really frantic the time. It was you and I.

[38:03] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: That was a crazy accident, though. The fact that I was able. Cause you stopped. You were right in front of me, and we were going downhill.

[38:11] AJ KUUSINEN: Yeah.

[38:11] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: And I think your flip flop went in the tire and stopped you, and you went over the handlebar, and I was right behind you. And the fact that I was able to stop and not land on you because you would have broke something had me or my bike landed on you. Unbelievable adrenaline in that moment. And then I broke all the rules. Right. That crash was so big between the two of us that cars stopped in both directions, and we didn't know either of them, which is crazy, given the story you just told about your bike accident. And two people we knew stopped, right? Yeah, two people stopped. We didn't know either of them. And I took a ride home from a stranger, like this man moved his car seat out of the backseat, put the seats down in their suv, and put our bikes in. And then you sat in my lap, and the drive was half a mile home, but it was like, oh, my gosh. How many bad examples did I just teach my kid?

[39:04] AJ KUUSINEN: Yeah. And out of that fall, I had just a goose egg on my forearm.

[39:08] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: That was remarkable that you were. I don't even think you had road rash. It was crazy how unheard you were.

[39:13] AJ KUUSINEN: Nothing. The only thing on my face was that goosebump. Everything else was perfectly fine. I think that actually, I take it back. That's probably the most nervous and worried I've ever seen.

[39:23] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: Well, I had adrenaline from my piece of the accident. It just was crazy. But, I mean, I think back to when the lunch lady came in and screamed in the gym during jump rope, and thank goodness I was halfway across the gym and the kids didn't know she was screaming at me. But the fact that I could remain so calm during that situation really made me realize that I can really stay calm under pressure. It's interesting.

[40:00] AJ KUUSINEN: Is there anything else you want to say before we wrap up?

[40:02] ANNETTE KUUSINEN: I don't think so.