After failing to win a prize in two different talent shows, I guess my mother gave up. Or maybe she gave up because when she tried to get me to learn the song "Mom and Dad Waltz"; I flatly refused. Really, who wants sing a lovey-dovey song about her parents in front of people? Yes, I was a spoiled, rebellious kid, the result of the only successful pregnancy of my mother's life. After my (half) sister got married when I was two years old, I was the only kid in our home.
However, I think her efforts must have made me enjoy having an audience, because I made sure someone heard me singing every chance I got.
For a short time we lived in Harlem (the one in Kansas City, not New York), next door to our landlords, an old couple who went to a small Pentecostal church on the corner. They were very kind to us, and obviously very religious. So that summer when the windows were all raised, I'd get a hymnbook, sit as close as possible to the open window in my bedroom, and sing away, positive they'd love hearing those Christian hymns.
When I was 13 or 14, I would sing current rock-and-roll songs of the day standing on a self-made platform in the yard (a washtub turned upside-down), assuming that somebody, somewhere, would hear me and enjoy it. I doubt anyone else of that age would have done such a thing... it seems so childish now.
I loved to "make a joyful noise" in church when they sang, and especially loved the first-Sunday all-day meetings we had at various Church-of-Christ congregations. I tried to sing louder than anybody else there.
At some point my mother taught me how to sing alto: we'd be going somewhere in the car singing hymns; my parents would sing soprano and I'd be singing the alto. At first, if I got lost doing my alto, mother would switch to alto and help me out, while Daddy kept singing the soprano.
When I think about the way I was always wanting somebody listen to me, I wonder if I really thought I was all that great. I was explaining this to Cliff the other day, and came to the realization that I might have needed a shrink at a very young age. But I was so happy!
I think what it amounted to was that I just wanted to be heard. I was the only child in a household with two working parents, spending a lot of time alone; I spent my early childhood pretending I had friends and talking to myself. After we moved to Kansas City, I had no real friends at all in that big school, not even in High School except for two cousins my age. I avoided making friends, and still do sometimes. That's probably why I blog... so somebody knows I'm here.
At least I can say I'm one of a kind.
