The von Trapps (and their adopted child)

Do you ever feel like you’re in a musical? Not that you went to see 42nd Street, or that you rented Chicago and watched it in high def with surround sound, but that you’re actually in a musical?

This is something I experience with relative frequency.

Daily.

It’s apparently what happens when you surround yourself with individuals who know every lyric to every song ever written, be it Les Mis or Starlight Express or James Taylor or Michael Jackson or Rhodesian war ballad. Now, they are highly respected CEOs and Corporate Responsibility Managers and management consultants and physicians and Regional Security Officers. But in past lives, they were presidents of drama clubs, shining stars of swing choirs, leads in all that is theatrical.

Their pasts haunt my present.

It’s not that someone sings a random line and it drops, it’s that an entire group – 4 people, 6 people, 12 – will burst into song. The whole song. They know without saying who’s on lead vocals and who’ll do back-up and who has doo-wop duty. They do that thing where your voice shakes and it sounds good. They crescendo. They harmonize. They snap. They dance. They sway. They smile.

It’s a little creepy.

They know no boundaries when it comes to time or place or patrons. A waiter mentions that his name is Jude and he is immediately serenaded by a table of 12. They re-write lyrics to already existing songs and perform them at people’s birthdays and going-away parties. Their karaoke is of opera caliber and they can bring you nearly to tears with Row Row Row Your Boat. Rounds of the song game turn heads. After one night’s impromptu rendition of an Oklahoma! piece in an upscale Indian restaurant, several tables broke into applause. This is not hyperbole.


As you can probably imagine, this is intimidating for someone that’s never even lifted a tune, let alone carried one. Tone deaf is generous. Dogs don't howl and cats don't screech. They just look on with a combination of bewilderment and pity.

While singing well is simply not an option for me, not singing at all is even less of one, as it would only draw unwelcome attention to oneself.

And so, one must develop strategies to convince the von Trapps that you’re a willing and eager participant in that morning/afternoon/evening’s animated jamboree, while simultaneously deflecting any verbalized notice of your unintentional squawking. Strike that perfect balance so that they’ll focus on their jazz hands and leave you be.

Fortunately, they’re all usually trying to outdo each other with the volume of their musical magic and intensity of their facial expressions, so this isn’t exceedingly difficult.

While spontaneous bursts of song in public places are one thing, it’s another animal altogether when the musicals are brought closer to home. Into the home. Som, recently returned from the UK, brought back for each of us the “perfect” gift. Meredith’s? A multiple-disc compilation of every musical ever composed, which was promptly loaded onto her ipod, and is now sung to with vigor.

Starting at sunrise.

Her musicals are becoming something of an alarm clock. I lay in bed, listening to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang coming from beyond my bedroom door, squash my pillow 'round my ears, and wonder what happened to the good old days of the cock-a-doodle-do.