When Did I Stop?

My childhood friend, Joanne called and asked me last night if I would sing a song at her mother's funeral. After I got off the floor, I sputtered, "Whaaat?"

"I noticed you still had your guitar in your office. (I guess she didn't notice the dust.) I can still hear your voice in my head when you sang with Diane," she coaxed. Diane is another childhood friend. "Can you learn a song in a week?"

OK.... now she was scaring me.

The only song I've sung lately is "Eensy Weensy Spider" to KC.

But it got me thinking.

There was a time when music was so important to all of us. We copied lyrics and practiced our guitars all the time. We SANG all the time.

"You and Diane even sang at a wedding," Joanne tried to jog my memory.


Diane and Joanne were both my college roommates at different times. Another roommate, Gail even got a few of us together to form a little singing group at one time and we performed on a campus radio station. OK... it was probably around midnight but hey, we were on the air for 5 minutes. You have to understand that Gail now teaches music and can make anybody who's got vocal chords sing.

So what happened?

Somewhere in time, I learned that I can't really sing well... so I stopped. I used to love to paint but somewhere along the line, I realized that I couldn't really paint as well as I wanted to... so I stopped. I wrote poetry, too... but I stopped.

And I'm thinking now. So what? Maybe I should just go ahead and try doing those things again. What have I been teaching all my students all these years and not done myself?

I think I'll just go ahead and dust off that ol' guitar. I'm going to sing some of those oldies but goodies to KC when she comes next month.

P.S. That's me on the far right with the dopey look.