my television debut

I grew up in a small city, one small enough that they announce the cafeteria lunch menus of local schools on the radio as a public service. It was large enough to have a television station, and to this day they insist on having Local News at 11, complete with all the high school sports highlights. And at least one year, they had the area school choirs perform Christmas concerts on live television. This is the story of my TV debut, a tale so traumatizing it doubtless would have killed any desire within me to ever become a singer if I had wanted to become one at the time.

I went to a small Christian School. My choir participation was forced, for a time by my parents, but I also seem to remember it being tied one's ability to play sports as well. Either way, the only proper attitude for a boy in my school to have was to hate choir (whether you actually did or not) and make the best of it by showing off for the girls whenever the Director wasn't looking your direction.

Which brings me to the music Director of my first televised performance. I think that directing our school choir must have been pretty stressful, because I can remember a few of them came and went during the time I was in there. I can't remember the name of the Director in this story, but her image is burned into my mind to this very day. She was pleasantly plump, sported a large permanent wave, and had the habit of wearing dark, slightly-too-tight paisley patterned dresses. These dresses unfortunately showcased her overactive sweat glands as the stains under each arm grew larger and larger during our performances.

We arrived on Television Hill and crammed our hot, polyester clothed bodies into the WHIZ studio. We were all understandably nervous as was the custom in the town in which I grew up. It was an expected character trait of all citizens that they shun the limelight at all costs; every public compliment was expected to be met with vigorous blushing and embarrassed protests.

We had prepared a Christmas Cantata, and it was a doozy. It felt like it took about 2 hours to perform. I had the embarrassing lot of being put on the front row, a by-product of my miniature size at the time, and I was very conscious of the fact that my knees were shaking throughout the performance. During commercial breaks I would think that I had gotten the situation under control, only to fall victim to a new outbreak of the shakes when the light on the TV camera came back on. I decided to take drastic measures and lock my knees.

Locking ones knees was a cardinal sin in our choir. Next to messing around with your tie or stomping on the riser there was nothing worse you could do. "If you lock your knees, you'll pass out" was an oft heard quote, spoken in the same tone of voice as, "You'll shoot your eyes out!"

But, desperate times called for disparate measures. I locked my knees resolutely and focused my energies on getting through the last third of the cantata. I was doing pretty well until I noticed colorful little dots around the edges of my vision. They were fascinating for awhile until I noticed that they were increasingly intruding on my sight lines. In fact, in a short while they began to advance in earnest on my Choir Director. I began to panic and in a effort to distract I forced myself to concentrate on the humor derived from my Director's sweaty pits, but nothing worked. The last thing I remember was my entire field of vision being a rainbow of blinking lights, with my Directors smiling face in the center, desperately trying to demonstrate how we should emote.

The next thing I remember is one of the mothers dragging me across the floor past the TV camera.

The fallout was pretty intense. I heard the lectures about knee locking, and also had to endure the results of a new invention: the Beta Video tape. This forced me to watch myself sway and collapse many a time thanks to the handy rewind feature. At the time, I secretly wished for the destruction of that tape, though now I would treasure a copy if I could find one.