Musically Disabled

On some cellular level, I was intended to be musical, I just know it.

I love music, I love singing, and I watch Dancing With Stars in absolute awe and envy. I’ll spell out the clear-cut evidence as to why I should be musically gifted, but in the meantime, my cellular-level musical desires are entirely squashed out by Reality.

In other words, I can’t carry a tune in a bucket.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present the facts of my musically gifted ancestry:

1. My grandmother played the piano for silent movies. For those younsters who think a silent movie involves a malfunctioning audio system, a long time ago folks went to the theater to see a motion picture with no sound; someone sitting in the theater played the piano, live, to accompany the film. (The fact that someone within a generation or two of me played piano for silent movies is more disturbing than discovering hair growing out of my earlobes. Pardon me while I take ten to sob uncontrollably and consider which assisted living community I'll need to move into next week.)

2. My mother not only played the piano well, but she sang in a musical group called the Bobby Soxtet (a very clever name, assuming you’re old enough to know what bobby socks are. If not, excuse me while I go pluck the gray hairs from my scalp and put the assisted living community's number on my speed dial.) This group sang, with much acclaim, on a local radio station.

3. My father played the drums in several bands, one of which, the Dynatones, recorded an LP and played up and down the East Coast in the 1950’s. He also played in a country-western band that somtimes grew a wild hair and dabbled in disco. For those of you unfamiliar with disco, or LP's, this is the equivalent of saying that THE AUTHOR OF THIS BLOG IS AGING AT WARP SPEED AND NEEDS TO GO LIE DOWN BEFORE SHE HAS A FULL-BLOWN MID-LIFE CRISIS with a side order of UTTER AND COMPLETE MELTDOWN.

4. As stated elsewhere on this boring blog, Wayne Newton zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz …..ooops! Wake up! Yes, yet another Wayne Newton reference, but you can get through it…..is somehow related to me on my mother’s side. Although this is not something we generally brag about (even though I mention it incessantly here,) it does prove that somewhere in my family tree there is someone who has earned fame, infamy and notoriety in the musical world. Nevermind that it's a world of lounge singers, tawdry venues and cheap buffet eateries.

And now I present the plain, simple truths of my musical gifts and talents:

1. As much as I like to think I can sing, I can’t.
2. As much as I want to be able to dance, I can’t.
3. The extent of my piano repertoire is as follows: Chopsticks and The Entertainer.

The juxtaposition of my ardent desire to perform, my first-hand knowledge of relatives who have been successful musicians and singers, the harsh, cold reality of my sad, sad karaoke voice, and the absolute lack of rhythm create much inner turmoil. (Along with sounds of agony from my family, as I belt out the Song Du Jour very, very badly while dancing like a stork with its beak stuck in an electrical socket.)

I really do hope the Assisted Living Community has karaoke, though.