This morning while I was driving to work, singing along to some generic Christmas song in my car, I had one of those embarrassing memory flashbacks that hits like a sudden stomach cramp, leaving me wincing and red-cheeked.

Back when I was younger, I could sing. Really sing. (I can say that now, without fake modesty, because I can't sing that well anymore - at least not in front of anyone. Even if I'm just messing around in front of Brad, I don't use the Good Voice. I save the Good Voice for my car, when I can really belt it out and reminisce on my broken dreams of becoming an Indigo Girl. Even the Good Voice isn't that good anymore, sadly. It's rusty from years of self-conscious neglect.) I sang in church, I sang at school for a few years - concert choir, show choir (you know, the group in high school you used to make fun of for singing "Puttin' on the Ritz" dressed in black tuxedo pants, cummerbunds and bow ties with serious overuse of jazz hands, spirit fingers, and dramatic sweeping arm gestures a la American Idol), I took private lessons, I tried out for All-Region, Area, and State choir. I contemplated majoring in voice in college, but decided to take the "I don't know what to do with my life" path instead. But really, I could sing.

Since I was a total music geek in high school, I was also in band - concert band, marching band, jazz band for a year. My junior year, I somehow got asked to sing "The Christmas Song" (Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...) at the Christmas concert with the jazz band playing. By myself. The whole song. It was a big deal to me, because solos are hard to come by in school choir, especially not the whole damn song with a band backing you up. It wasn't my first time (no, that would be the time I sang "Babe" by Styx at the junior high school variety show thing) on stage singing solo, so I felt okay about it - enough so that I only practiced it once or twice with the band, and never with a microphone.

When the annual Christmas concert commenced, I took my place in front of the auditorium filled with people and started out, "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." That's when I had the realization that changed my path from Singer to Ne'er-do-well: Man, having 300 people staring at you kind of sucks. I don't like it. As much as my inner child loved to pretend to be on stage in front of thousands of people listening in awe, the truth is that I don't want two people staring at me at the same time, much less 300. (Can you tell, with my own website and all?)

After that first line, the room started to fade at the corners of my vision, telescoping inward like a bad straight-to-video movie special effect. My mouth was dry. I held the mic too close to my lips. I eeked out the lyrics, staring at the back wall of the auditorium, swaying slightly from side to side like a Weeble. And somehow, right in the middle of the song, I got to the part "every mother's child is gonna spy... to see if reindeer really know how to fly," but instead of "reindeer", I sang "reindeers." Reindeer-S. WITH AN S.

God, the horror. The worst part is that I didn't even know I had made that colossal mistake until a year and a half later, after I had completely blocked the memory and vowed never to sing again in public. I was reminded by a guy who I had just started dating (if by "dating" you mean "being tortured by".) We were having that "I remember the first time I saw you" conversation. I started by telling how I had first seen him in his brother's car driving down my street. He giggled, and said that the first time he had seen me was the time I sang that Christmas song, and when I got to the "reindeer-SSSSSSSS" part, his dad leaned over to him and made fun of me.

NO WONDER THAT DIDN'T WORK OUT, is all I'm saying. Mofo Christmas music.

Lucy loves you |