The Fall

Oh Say Can You See

Just before the Dining In was to begin my fellow singers and I assembled to a backstage area. I was too stubborn to admit it but my high heels were killing my feet. More accustomed to wearing combat boots, my ankles were weak and I felt wobbly.

We had practiced the Star Spangled Banner for weeks now and we knew we were good. We were so good soldiers used to come just to hear us practice. But maybe we knew too much or maybe we didn’t know enough because now stage fright was beginning to set in. Everyone was getting nervous and that was making me nervous and nerves didn’t settle well on wobbly legs.

We were singing our rendition acapella and our leader was to give us our starting note. It worked beautifully the previous 2,589 times in practice –which is why I had been so confident to tell everyone how good we were.

Because you know, I was just that confident.

The longer we stood backstage the more nervous the group become and the more nervous the group became, the less confident they were. With that lack of confidence and bundle nerves, we took the stage. We lined up. We readied ourselves and our leader gave us a note.

A bad note.

And then we all jumped off on that note. A note much too high to begin the Star Spangled Banner on. Much too high. But we just kept singing because no one really knew what to do and our leader wasn’t much of a leader. In fact, he just stood there like a deer caught in the headlights.

I sang as best I could but I could tell voices were dropping off one by one until we got to the, “and the rockets red glare” and no one was singing. Well, no one but me that is because everyone had stopped singing and you know, the show must go on. In my mind I was begging and pleading for everyone to start singing with me but they just stood there and I kept singing.

And it was awful –horrible!! It was much too high so my voice was squeaky and sounded basically like nails on a chalk board. Making matters only worse, I caught that nervous energy from the group so my heart was pounding and realizing I was basically singing a solo with a quivering voice, I was all the more nervous and to make matters even worse –I could see the looks on the faces in the crowd! I was already unstable on my heels and my knees were shaking so badly my skirt looked like I was trying to do a Hawaiian Hula version of our beloved Nation Anthem! My face was as bright red as the strips on Old Glory herself. It was a mess –one giant hot mess.

Afterwards we all gathered backstage and everyone knew how bad it was but at least they had the smarts to stop embarrassing themselves. Me? Oh no –I just kept barreling through it, awful as it was.

When we made our way back to our tables we got the strangest looks. My Instructor flat out told me, “That was THE WORST rendition of the National Anthem I ever heard! And you can’t sing!!!”

And I heard many other similar comments and there was really nothing I could say because they were right.

It was just that bad.

But I learned a few lessons that night --the biggest lesson was in humility.