One of the admirable tenets of the church I attend is the notion of an unpaid clergy, meaning the organization is staffed voluntarily (and I use that word generously in some cases) by its lay members. Admirable, that is, until the practice trickles down to a personal level and you are asked to do something you don't want to do.
Like conduct the choir, for example.
That's been my new gig for the past several months. Please don't assume, like everyone else does, that just because I have a musical background it naturally follows I'd take to waving my arms to music like a duck to water.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Instead, follow the assumption that a girl who has been at eye level with the redwoods since before she ate solids might have acquired a certain aversion to attracting attention over the years. Assume that when people stare at her, she immediately thinks something is on her shirt, her shirt is unbuttoned, or she's not even wearing a shirt. Assume that the practice of waving her arms to call attention to herself is, in her mind, akin to being drawn and quartered and slightly less preferable than being cast into a lion's den.
At any rate, what's done is done and I'm making the best of my nervous breakdown one week at a time.
That's not even why I brought this up.
What I really wanted to tell you was when I was five years old, my mum enrolled me in a ballet class taught by a woman who had missed her true calling in life. She was much better suited to be a world tyrant, but with the mild Canadian political climate being what it was, she must have run into all sorts of red tape launching her coup and therefore ended up in the ballet studio instead.
It was misery, I'm telling you. And I think she had a special dislike for me since I had more the physicality to lift ballerinas, not be one. She actually made the girls who performed poorly line up against the barre at the end of each class and get swatted on the derrière.
Is that even legal??
Anyway, you can imagine which line I frequented.
But in spite of my tearful implorings, my mum refused to let me quit. And I'm sure it had less to do with the possibility she'd already paid for the lessons than it did with the fact my mum refused to let anybody quit anything, ever. Not to put too fine a point on the matter but if my mum had wanted to launch a coup, she wouldn't have ended up in the ballet studio, I can assure you of that.
She did, however, consent to letting me retire my ballet slippers once the year came to a close.
But.
On the very last day of class, our teacher took us to the Dairy Queen.
What is that?
Doesn't that, like, obliterate some international convention for the treatment of young, impressionable prisoners?
Curse you, Dilly Bar! Curse you and your waxy chocolate coating! Curse you and your underlayer of vanilla ice cream which struck me with the worst case of Stockholm Syndrome since I had a boyfriend who was mean to me and I liked him anyway.
I went home covered in chocolate and begged my mum to sign me up for another year.
Yes, I did.
And yes, she did.
And yes, it was every bit as traumatic the second time around.
All of which brings me to my main point, or at least gets me that much closer:
If you would've been standing in a certain line at a certain grocery store yesterday, you would have overheard a conversation between a man with three pineapples and a woman with a cart full of Ghiradelli chocolate, wherein he made fun of her for being so greedy until she pointed out someone buying three pineapples clearly has his own issues to contend with.
What I couldn't tell him was I was launching a coup. A sneaky, psychological coup. Because I figure if I offer these treats to the choir like the great villains of yore--like the White Witch and her Turkish Delight, like Willy Wonka (not a bona fide villain, per se, but still sketchy) and his promise of infinite chocolate, like my ballet teacher and her insidious Dilly Bars--I will secure a momentary Svengali-esque hold which causes them to forget the horror of watching me struggle with 2/2 time and commit to another year of whatever it is we are accomplishing when we meet together to sing in the choir.