Choiring and Singing; God Help Us All by Jon Krey

Yes, I remember this subject from childhood.  As I recall the songs they would sing usually had nothing whatsoever to do with my need to hurry up and head home to the locked bathroom so I could play with my…uh…”Tinker Toys.”  I was far better off “practicing” there anyway rather than with the choir with all their screeching and hollering.  But too often sitting in the congregation with Mom she would occasionally find me dealing with a very prominent stiff condition over which I had virtually no control.  She’d grit her teeth, slap me silly right there in front of other fine Christians and make me sit down.  Her slap never helped anyway though it did occasionally make the situation more rigid!  What was she to expect, I was only 13 ½; a wet-with-sweat, tender and questioning youth. In the choir there was one magnificent specimen, a muscular tall blond football player from Junior High who sang a prominent tenor in the choir and who, once in a while, looked in my direction…at me! Maybe that was the basic cause of all my turgid grief.  Otherwise, all the rest of that “music” coupled with the Hammond Organ’s bass speaker right in front had a really bad effect on my auditory nerves.

Later as an adult my ears were set to overload by disco music since I usually stood in front of the bass speakers at dance bars trying my very best to look like wallpaper.  I also lost some hearing due to the fat kid next door's Harley Davidson motorcycle with its “glorious” cacophony of thunder which he referred to as “music to his ears.”  It wasn’t helped either when I was attempting to qualify on the firing range without ear protection in ROTC.  The range officer didn’t particularly like me since he probably knew my target wasn’t in front of me but usually right beside me with his own large 45.  Ooooh!  Consequently neither checked to see if I was…well…ready.  I was but not for that paper target in front.

As a result of all this, later in life, I probably couldn’t have “heard” the difference between someone praising my magnificent high belted jeans from Montgomery Wards and someone about to knock my “faggot block off.”

I suppose lesser hearing may benefit me today in that I don’t have to hear most of the harangue going on around me in “necessary” meetings, lectures, sirens in traffic??, introductions to people I didn’t want to meet and/or  people singing off key during a choir practice.  So today, I find it much more practical to just read lips and look at facial expressions.  It also helps me avoid something others tend to refer to clandestinely as their “state wide prized choir.”  Besides, I can’t sing anyway and am too busy listening to the ringing in my ears.

About the Author

"I'm just a guy from Tulsa (God forbid). So overlook my shortcomings, they're an illusion."