The Fourth Tenor

Tuesday night, in an effort to meet some people and perhaps get something else to laugh about (like I don't have enough), I decided to stop in and join the choral society. That's right, folks, me join a choral society. Now, my singing voice has never been confused with Carreras's, Domingo's, Pavarotti's, or even Hunter's, but I figured I couldn't do too much damage when I could hide behind people who actually knew what they were doing. When I walked into the room, sweaty and out of breath from a two mile jog from my apartment to make sure I was on time, I saw an Irish friend I had made sitting in the front, so I quickly sat down next to her to avoid any additional embarrassment. After picking up a copy of the music, we did a few vocal warmups (as if my voice was going to get any better?) and signed our names under our voice range. Not seeing a choice for "none, thank you very much," I decided upon tenor, not that I really knew the difference between a tenor, baritone, barista, or bartender. So we start going through the piece, Georg Friedrich Händel's "Acis and Galatea," voice by voice. Worrying more about my close proximity to the teacher upsetting his cochlear harmony than where everyone else was sitting, I failed to notice a very key part of this worldwide choral secret society -- all the dudes sit in the back. Finding myself surrounded by girls, I sheepishly got up and motioned that I'd probably be better off in the back with the other guys. Once I recovered from my poor self-placement, I was able to do okay, even though there were only two tenors that night, myself included. I followed the other for most of it, but in one chorus, there were two tenor parts, and I actually ended up with a mini-solo. Brilliant. I'm still undecided whether I'll make the choral society a regular Tuesday evening happening or not. Either way, there's an improv group that I was invited to that meets on Thursday night. If anyone knows my lame comedy, that could either be awful or awesome. Stay tuned for that report - it's bound to entertain.