Thursday, December 25, 2003

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.