Tuesday, June 20, 2006

"Don't worry if it's not good enough for anyone else to hear . . ."

I have never been able to sing well. This was quite a problem when I was a high school theatre student wanting to participate in our spring musical, and one of the more challenging things I had to do in high school was sing a very brief solo right before the dream ballet sequence of Oklahoma! I'm fairly certain that this was the extent of my solo:

Out of your dreams
and into his arms
you yearn to fly . . .

This itty-bitty sentence caused me so much grief, mostly because it was to be sung by a soprano, and I don't know what our music director was thinking when she gave me that part.

I practiced and practiced and practiced. It was my little solo that started the entire song, and I wanted it to be perfect. My parents were so irritated by my vocal inability that they would make me sit in the car in the garage and not allow me to practice inside the house. The only practicing I did outside of the car was on stage and on the basketball court outside the theatre. My friend would go to one end while I stayed at the other so I could practice projecting my frightened alto voice that was forced into a falsetto soprano.

The show came and went, and I survived (although right before the song I locked eyes with a boy I had dated very briefly that did not end well who was sitting in the front row of the house, and I completely misread the conductor and screwed up the opening of the song at our very first performance).

After Oklahoma! I avoided musicals and stuck with the things I could actually do well. My singing remained in the car with me, and to this day I have no problem singing along with the music, even if people in other cars can see me. I figure, 'Hey, they can't hear me! As far as they know, I'm a star.'

This evening when I picked up the twins from day care, I had the radio on and found myself singing along with the music. Kyle commanded, "No Mommy! No song!" In my car! My musical refuge!

I decided not to torture my children with my singing and took to "dancing" along to the music as I drove (yes, a feat, I know) "No Mommy! No dance!" Kyle scolded.

Fine, fine . . . No fun for me.

A few moments later I peeked back at Kyle through my rear-view mirror, and he was dancing.