Writhing Dogs, Teacher’s Pets, and Flying Butts.

In order to get home from the rehearsal, I had to walk past a multi-level, open air parking garage. Somebody on one of the upper floors must have flicked a cigarette over the railing just as I walked by, because it fell several stories and landed right on my head. Let that be a lesson to you people who fling your butts about all willy-nilly, because I had to go home and pick ashes out of my hair. The city ought to start posting signs, “BEWARE OF FLYING BUTTS.” I would totally pay extra taxes to get those signs, as long as that’s exactly how they read. Flying butts. Hee!Tonight was my first rehearsal with the holiday chorus I auditioned for way back in June. I’m supremely excited about this, because this isn’t just some random, casual church choir. This is the Philly Pops. This is Peter fuckin’ Nero. This is a pretty big deal — not as big a deal as, say, my parents are making it out to be, but a big deal nonetheless.

I don’t have much chorus experience, to be honest. I sang with the choir in high school for a couple of years, but that’s it. I auditioned for this because it was a good opportunity, and I got in because I have a pleasant sounding voice and can sight-read sheet music, but I’m totally unfamiliar with the choral terminology. I know what forte and piano and ritard mean, and obviously I can spot a crescendo or decrescendo, but beyond that, I’m clueless. I have more or less no idea what half the things the director was calling out during tonight’s rehearsal meant. I’m a quick study though, and I’m sure I’ll catch on soon.

Here’s what amazed me: when the rehearsal started, the first thing the director did was have us pull out one of the more difficult pieces of music. He said, “Okay, let’s just see what you can do.” He played only the first note, and then had all of us sing the entire piece all the way through, a capella in eight-part harmony, without reviewing a single note in advance. And you know what? It sounded amazing. On the very first time singing through the piece, we sounded better than how my high-school chorus sounded after an entire semester’s worth of daily rehearsals.

I feel really, really good about this chorus.

Of course, as with any sort of group, there are the teacher’s pets. One of them (I’ll call her Amber — because that’s her name,) must have raised her hand six times during the three hour rehearsal to pipe in and point out which notes were being sung incorrectly by which sections of which voice parts. Towards the end, the director was just answering, “Yes, Amber. I’m drawing a little sad face above that note in my music right now.” The other teacher’s pet? Sits right next to me. They’re supposed to reassign the seating after the second or third rehearsal — it won’t come soon enough.

One of the women in the chorus is blind; she sat sans music, recording the entire rehearsal to tape. She must go home and listen to that tape over and over again, picking out her part and memorizing it. That’s amazing to me.

The woman’s seeing-eye-dog, however, I feel quite badly for. Every time the soprano section had one of their super-high notes, the poor pup rolled over on her side and covered her ears with her paws. Those were some damned high notes.

I was hoping that since this event is called a HOLIDAY chorus, that there would be some music appropriate for other winter holidays. We’re still missing a couple of pieces that we’re supposed to be getting soon, but as far as I can tell, there will be no such other music. Dammit. You know, there are some people in this world who do not celebrate Christmas, and if the planners are so intent on being “PC” that they have to change the title of the concert, they really ought to let some of that PC-ness spill over into the selection of music. Oh well. The Christian majority strikes again. You’d think I’d be used to this by now.

The other girl who sat next to me, not the teacher’s pet to my left but the one to my right, seems to be really sweet. The group as a whole was discussing parking, and I gave my input as a person who lives in the neighborhood, and the girl asked me if I went to school here. I told her no, that I don’t go to school, and she looked at me kind of funny. I realized that she thought I would still be in high school. I laughed as I explained to her that I’m older than I look, and that even if I had done college, I would have been graduated from that by now, too.

I get remarks like this all the time — got them from Creepy Dinner Theatre Guy a few weeks ago, and I don’t understand why. I suppose it has something to do with the gigantic dimple in my left cheek and my fivehead, both of which would make anybody look younger than they really are, but when I look in the mirror, I see the face and body of a grown woman and not a sixteen-year-old child. When I compare pictures of me now versus me when I actually was sixteen, I see a huge difference, and I wish that I could figure out why strangers, who have been saying I look sixteen ever since I was thirteen, have placed me in this state of suspended animation where I haven’t aged in nine years.

I’m thinking that maybe this is some sort of curse for having freaked out one too many times about growing up. I bitched and whined about it so much that now, dun dun DUN, I can’t! Ooh. That could make for an interesting fable. I’ll have to remember that, the next time my creative-writing urge kicks in. Eeenteresting. Veddy, veddy eeenteresting…

EDIT: I scoured through all the photos on my computer to try to find two similar pictures of me at different ages so you can all see that I don’t look sixteen anymore! In the picture on the left, I was barely fifteen, and in the picture on the right, I was almost twenty-one. I’ve grown up, dammit, SEE?