Give Me Middle C

The good Lord gave us all talents of one kind or another.  And while we very much appreciate the talents we do have, it’s the ones that we haven’t been given that really can rankle us.

For example, I love music.  I love listening to music, dancing to music, and singing to music.  Of those three things, I can listen very well. I can dance better than Elaine Benes.  But I can’t sing.

I was not aware that I lacked that talent for a fairly long time.  I would sing my heart out when at home listening to all kinds of music-I was especially fond of musicals and would sing along to all the albums we had: Sound of Music, The King and I, Oliver, Mary Poppins, South Pacific, Oklahoma!.  I would sing at church on Sundays.  I would sing in the car listening to the radio.

So, it would surprise no one that I decided to try out for the school choir.  I was around 9 years old I think.  In 4th grade I believe. The school was St. Denis in Havertown.  In that era, there were a lot of Catholic schools and most were chock full to the brim with tons of kids.  I think we were three classes of 4th graders with about 30 kids per class.  In other words, a big talent pool.

Choir tryouts were held in the convent.  We were told that if we were interested in trying out, we should go to the convent after school. 

That right there put the fear of God in me.  Go to the convent? Where all the scary nuns lived? Enter that den that was peopled with hell, fury, and damnation clothed in a black dress, sensible black shoes, and a veil? And sporting a crucifix and a rosary as a feint to give off an air of Christian kindness?

The day arrived.  I approached the convent with fear and trepidation.  I tried to steady my nerves.  I bravely knocked on the door and was admitted in.  I do not even remember who let me in because at that point, I was struggling to breathe.  I was suddenly gripped by tunnel vision, and everything kind of faded out around me.

I somehow materialized in what seemed to be a sitting room of some sort.  I was only aware of the nun sitting at the piano, and a chair that was against the wall I was facing.  I am sure there was more to the room than that, but nothing else registered.  Other than it seemed dark in the room.  Dark and shadowy.  But I think I was still in the grip of the tunnel vision. 

I stood there, just barely over the threshold.

The ancient being spoke to me. Her voice was gruff and was tinged with the bitterness that creeps into one’s soul when they are bereft of light and love and are instead filled with disappointment and regrets.

“Come in,” she barked at me.  “Don’t just stand there, come in.”

I think I shuffled my feet in a semblance of what one would call walking and found myself about 2 feet further into the room.

“You are here to try out for the choir?” she asked me.

I nod my head, my voice failing me.  Which, given this was a choir tryout, was not a good sign.

“Okay, “ she said.  “Give me middle C.”

If it was possible to freeze even more when one is already paralyzed, I froze even more.

Middle C? What is middle C? I don’t know what that is, let alone how to give it to her.  I thought I would just be asked to sing one of the songs from church.  I was all prepared with Gifts of Finest Wheat, or Make Me a Channel of Your Peace.  But middle C?  What was that?!

Annoyance flashed across her face as she sized me up in an instant, and found me lacking.

She plunked at the piano. “Middle C”, she said again.  Her mistake was thinking that she could just repeat her previous command, accompanied by a note on the piano, as if that would clear up any confusion on my part.

But I continued to stand there, stock still, frozen in place, as if my feet had grown roots and were deep beneath the ground beneath the convent, never to release me.  No sound, let alone anything approaching anything remotely musical, left my lips.

She tried one more time. “Give me middle C”, she said imperiously with another plunk of the piano.

To this day, I do not know how I made it out of the convent.  As if by osmosis, where before I had been in there, I was then outside.  Back in the sunshine and the golden light of day.  No one asking me for middle C.

I clearly did not make the choir.  And thus was my awakening to the fact that the good Lord had decided that singing would not be one of my talents.  If I didn’t even know what middle C was, I clearly couldn’t sing.

Lucky for me, we moved when I was in the 6th grade.  That Catholic school, Blessed John Neumann, was much, much smaller.  We were one class with a total of 16 kids.  Translation? Small talent pool. 

No tryouts for choir after school.  If you wanted to be in the choir, you just showed up.  I showed up.  Nobody asked for middle C.   And I sang my heart out.