If you have ever heard me sing, you would recognize that you will not be clapping; you will be screaming “shut up!” But, last year my mother insisted I join the school chorus. The chorus consisted of three boys and nine girls, and one of the two boys was practically a girl. At first it was not that bad, but then every song got more embarrassing. We had to sing the Christmas carol “Glad Tidings.” Now if you do not know I am Jewish, so it is kind of weird singing about “Jesus the King.” That was by far not the worst.
We could not find a song for the all-school convocation that we were having. One time the song “1000 Miles” by Vanessa Carlton came up. My old friend and I absolutely refused to sing that song. Finally we convinced the teacher not to sing it. This song is girly because the lyrics are “if I could fall into the sky, do you think time would pass me by and maybe, and maybe.” That is not a lyric that is very manly I would say. We then came up with the idea of “Obla-Dee-Obla-Da” by the Beatles. We agreed, not knowing what was going to happen, thinking that that was the manliest song that we are going to get.
We started singing it normally for the first few weeks. It was going just fine until a girl in my class suggested we use puppets.
I said, “That’s just great; what normal person that is over the age of ten would even think about using puppets in private let alone an ALL SCHOOL CONVO!”
Of course, the girl had 100 puppets, all of them; either Barney the dinosaur or kings and queens. So there I am standing there with my hand up the butt of Barney the dinosaur singing, “Desman has a barrow in the market place.” I felt ridiculous during rehearsals, let alone an actual show.
The next day was the concert. I was thinking about how in the world I could get out of this. I knew that I already had too many days that school year that I was sick, so I could not fake it. I had to deal with it.
Ten minutes before the concert started, I was in shock, wondering how I got into this. It was performance time so I thought, “Oh, I will just get it over with.” So there I was standing in front of the whole pre-school to the senior class standing there with a puppet in my hand. The song started on the usual “da, da, da, da, da, dadada,” and we started to sing. Waving back and forth the puppets, not even thinking about the singing but how much of a sucker I was standing in front of school with a puppet in my hand, the whole school laughing at us.
I could hear the crowd saying, “What a loser!” and laughing at me. The rest of the school year, I was taunted and teased for that one song. I have had some embarrassing moments, but this by far is my most embarrassing.