Copycattin'

Sometimes, in my group of friends, the actions of one will prompt similar actions by another, or several others. You might call this copycat behavior, or you might call it the "oh yeah, I should be doing that too!" factor. At any rate, it's happened many times. One recent example:

Oct. 11, 2003: Kev writes first "Fun Facts" installment.
Nov. 10, 2003: Kev updates "Fun Facts" and posts about it again on this blog.
Nov. 11-12, 2003: Fizban, Halfling and Dingus all post "Fun Facts" on their own blogs.

And now we have another one:

~Spring, 2003: Fizban sings with the choir (correct me if I have the semester wrong).
December, 2003: Dingus sings with the choir.
December 24, 2003: Kev sings with the choir.

Say whaaaaat? That's right, I sang with my dad's church choir last night for one of the Christmas Eve services.

Now understand, despite the fact that as singers go, I'm a really good saxophone player (haha), I'm not a total novice to the art. I've done plenty of choral stuff in Sinfonia over the years, so I think I sing well in groups, even if I'm not sure you'd want to hear me sing a solo. But I hadn't been in an actual SATB choir since maybe music camp in high school. *shudder*

So how did this happen? Well, Mom was taking some new medicine and it wasn't making her feel too good. Dad was singing at 7:00 and 9:00, and Mom and I were going to go up there at 9. When she decided she felt too bad to go, that left me with two real options: 1) Sit by myself in a church where I don't really know anybody, or 2) Sing with Dad. Obviously, I chose 2).

Now I was not an unfamiliar entity to this church's music program; last year (in my pre-blogging days), I had played a soprano sax feature on "Silent Night" as an offertory for two Christmas Eve services. It was great; Dad was on stage in the choir, and that was really the first time we had ever collaborated on a musical event (he just started the choir thing about 7-8 years ago, I think). This year, nobody thought to ask me to bring a horn until I was 15 minutes away from home on Tuesday, so that didn't happen (much to the dismay of the choir director's wife, who really liked my playing, I guess).

So anyway, everything went fine; it felt really weird wearing a choir robe (someone should've taken a picture), but I sang pretty well for 15 minutes of rehearsal and had a good time up there. I also now have an open invitation to bring a horn whenever I'm in town. And I can tell Fizban and Dingus that I've "joined the crowd," even if for only one day.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: (From a conversation in the choir room after the service)
CHOIR LADY (to me): Thanks for singing with us tonight.
WISEGUY IN CHOIR: Yeah, it was nice to have a real bass voice in there for once (a slam aimed at Dad)
DAD: I heard that! I'll remember that...
WISEGUY: No you won't! You're an old man; you forget everything.

So much love in the room...especially on Christmas.