Music and Me, Part 1

I've enjoyed singing for almost as long as I can remember. When we were really young, my mom, a "reformed hippy," would play her acoustic guitar and sing folk songs with my sister and I. Some that I remember from those days:

• I was Born About 10,000 Years Ago
• The Name Game
• Make New Friends...
• The Crawdad Song

When I was a little older, we discovered Mom's old 45 RPM records in the garage, and quickly found our favorites, which we played over and over (and over) again alongside our own kids' records like Monster Mash and Flashbeagle:

• Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight?
• Alley Oop
• Snoopy vs. the Red Baron
• Dinner With Drac

(Yeah, my musical tastes ran a little quirky when I was a kid. They still do). Fast-forward a few years, and I was making mixtapes with stuff from my friends, my sister, recorded off the radio and TV... it's probably hard for my kids to even imagine that world, when the Internet wasn't there to give us basically unlimited access to nearly limitless music, almost entirely on demand (otherwise I wouldn't have even been able to put together these playlists!). Plus, music was much more social back then, I think — I discovered Weird Al Yankovic, Ray Stevens, the Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, Erasure, ABBA, They Might Be Giants, Rush, and so many other bands via friends that gave me copies. I kind of miss that, actually. Online sharing somehow isn't the same.
Anyway, now to the actual point of this post. I remember singing "Just an Old-Fashioned Love Song" in our elementary school choir, and it touched a nerve somewhere deep inside me. I LIKED singing in a group! What's more, I seemed to be pretty good at it... I don't have perfect pitch, but I can copy others pretty well (which is the subject of another blog post entirely), and I'm pretty good at remembering lyrics (unfortunately, the corollary is that once something's stuck in my head, it's nearly impossible to unseat it). A few years later in middle school, I had the chance to avoid having to take P.E. (which I hated[1]) by signing up for choir instead. Kind of a no-brainer for me.
I didn't pursue choir in high school (one of my few regrets from that time), but I never stopped singing along to the stereo when I was driving alone, and music became a constant background presence in my life. Then, as in other aspects of my teenage years, puberty came along and messed things up. My middle school baritone slowly but surely descended into a deep bass. Guess that means no more singing along with Collin Raye, right? Well, I certainly thought so...
To be continued...

Notes

[1]Except for swimming class – swimming was awesome.