What a way to wake up in the morning!

Some people wake up to the smell of freshly brewed coffee in the morning. Others to the scent of bacon and eggs frying. Five days a week, I wake up to the sound of the telephone. That is Stan calling to tell me that it is time for the girls and I to get out of bed. This morning, my ear drums awakened me to the sound of music. Unfortunately, Julie Andrews was nowhere around. Instead, the herd who was asleep with me on the bed, heard the ambulance whistle. It hurt their little ears so it only seemed right to them to hurt any human ears around them, I guess. It worked! The girls and I were wide awake by the time that they had completed their song's finale!

That reminds me of a telephone call that I received on Friday morning... As you know, my birthday was then. It has long been a family tradition of ours to call the birthday boy or girl and sing "Happy Birthday" to him or her. For the past couple of years, it has also become a family tradition to be sung to by Thorny, the Christensen's Chinese Crested dog. All that Lori and Lars have to do is to start singing the song themselves and Thorn-Dog joins right in! It is the cutest thing!!! Our Chloe is a litter mate to Thorny but she has not learned how to wish people Happy Birthday yet.

At times, I have been able to entice our herd to sing. All that I need to do is to be in the same room with them and attempt to sing any song. The pain that I produce in their years must be even worse than what my singing does to humans. Before the latter 1970s, I really thought that I had a nice singing voice. My high school vocal music teacher corrected that one day while we were practicing for our annual high school musical.

Back then, there were MANY students in our school system. Mr. James Stambaugh was an amazing vocal music teacher. I would guess that he was one of the best that Wichita County ever had. Because of his expertise, more students than ever signed up for his class. Speaking for myself, I learned a great deal about music from him. He always took large groups of students to regionals and state. Once there, they usually outdid most of their competitors from other areas. Our musicals were always well-attended. People came from all over to have the opportunity to not only get to hear some of the best singing around but to witness the outstanding acting that Mr. Stambaugh was able to teach his students.

It was one morning during rehearsel when Mr. Stambaugh had become disillusioned with the class. People were not singing up to their abilities. He cut off whatever song we were singing in the middle and chastized us for not trying hard enough. Given the fact that I thought the world of our music instructor, I decided that it was time for me to sing louder so that the other altos in my area could hear our part and sing better like our teacher required. I had been noticing for quite some time that more and more altos were really singing off-key. It was disgusting to my sensitive ears.

I figured that the louder I would sing, the better the example that I could pass on to them. That, Folks, is when the bottom fell out of my musical career that I thought might lie somewhere in my future. Mr. Stambaugh not only waved his conducting wand and other hand to stop us from singing, he hollered out, "Elder, just mouth the words! You are WAY off key and it is causing problems with the rest of the class!!!"
I then realized that if he had had a few more arms and hands, that he would have been using each and every one of them to hush my singing that day! From then on, I obeyed my teacher and just pretended to be singing when in class. It did the rest of the class a lot of good! LOL!!!

To this day, NO ONE wants to hear me sing!!! My babies would cry most of the time when I tried to sing them lullabies. I realized that it would have been abusive to them for me to continue my musical rampage. Instead, I read storybooks to them. I must've been a really good reader because they never cried out! LOL!!!

To this day, I have never forgotten my "awakening" that Mr. Stambaugh gave to me that morning nor have I ever forgotten his amazing talent that he had for passing on his talent to all of us. He was WONDERFUL!!! Amongst his credits in Wichita County were Crystal Crouch, Steve Tasker, Kendall Adler, Robin Clark... The music and acting that his musicals produced was way beyond what most people expected from high school vocal groups!!!

VLE-B