It's fucking hot in my god damn house. I'm on the side of the island where the breeze isn't the greatest, and to add insult to injury, the windows in my house are placed in such a way that cross breeze is impossible. The worst room in the house is the office, and I spend the most time in here. I'm sitting in front of my computer, topless as all god damn get out, and I'm still fucking BAKING. I could turn on the a/c, but it's just so fucking expensive.
Moving on.
Have I mentioned in here that I love singing? I really fucking do. I'm alright at it. I have a decent enough singing voice that I don't offend people if I feel like crooning along with something, but not so great a voice that I could have gone anywhere with it (MAYBE off off Broadway musicals, though. I sang far better on stage than I do along to radio music, and my AMT directors always said so, as well).
Back in middle school, I had a lot of friends that also loved singing. We all sat together in the lunchroom, singing popular songs on the radio. While my mom still didn't let me listen to age appropriate music in middle school, I had friends whose parents weren't fucking lunatics, and it was with my friends that I listened to Aaliyah and Robyn and TLC and Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston and all of the other totally normal, totally NOT oldies songs that my group of friends and I would sit and sing for 35 minutes every day.
I'm not trying to big myself up by saying that I was one of two stand out singers in the group, that's just the fact of the matter. While it was a fairly round robin of taking turns to sing a song you had been practicing to sing in front of the group while the rest of us served as background vocals, I got more cafeteria air time, and everybody else would often request I prepare something for the group. It's pretty obvious we were REALLY cool, so no need to ask. The other girl was my friend Randy. She was tall, very skinny, and blonde. I remember her pretty well, because my super non-worldly ass was floored to learn that she was born in Japan, and circa 6th grade, I thought to be born somewhere meant you WERE that thing, and you had to look the part, too. Randy did not look Japanese, so I was very surprised.
I'm not proud of that.
Anyway, Randy and I were the top singers in the group (I think there were almost ten of us. Maybe eight or nine girls). Sometimes we'd sing together, and anything that got me more singing time was a boon to my ego economy, so I was there for it. Except being one of two wasn't enough....I had to be better than Randy. I had to edge her out. I had to make it so nobody wanted to hear anybody sing but me, so I could reign supreme over my group of fucking nerds that sang in the corner of the lunch room. I didn't want to be obvious about wanting to be head singing nerd bitch, so I needed to really do something that would leave Randy way the fuck behind me and it would seem like everybody's free choice to leave her there.
And I knew exactly what to do.
A little aside here that's going to pretty much give away the plot: outside of listening to oldies music, my aunt had turned me on to a band that was vaguely known, but only for their commercial success: Rockapella. If you're reading this and you have no idea who they are (but are around my age or maybe a little older), they were the group that did all of the music for the TV show Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego (I fucking LOVED that show. Too bad I fucking sucked at the geography part of it), and also one or two of the more melodic Folgers commercials. They were an acapella group that did more than kid game shows and coffee jingles, but I fucking knew that nobody in my fucking group knew that shit. Hell, I only knew that shit because my aunt lucked into finding their cassette tape at a garage sale and she made a copy for me because she thought I'd like it. Spoiler alert, I fucking did, and still do, and I hate that their first CD is so god damn expensive. It's 113 dollars on Amazon, which is just outrageous. It should be noted that I took a thirty five minute long hiatus from writing this to find the website that has all of their songs from Primer available to listen to for free, and I am currently listening to Rockapella and having the fucking BEST time (I also made a bookmark on my bookmark bar, because it's taken me three years to find this website again). This shit still pops, and I don't give a shit what anybody thinks about me for listening to it. Primer, 2, and Don't Tell Me You Do are still three of my favorite nostalgia tours, they're just damn near impossible to get access to. Back to the point.
I threaded the needle for a couple of weeks, setting my ruse up slowly so it would seem more believable. And then one week, I asked for cutting Randy's place in line, because I had done it: I. Had. Written. My. Own. Song. Bitches, when I tell you that shit was buzzing over that, I am no kidding. Everybody was SO excited. Everybody railroaded Randy and agreed that an original piece should be given priority status, and it was my fucking time to shine, mother fuckers. I had spent the last couple of weeks telling them that I was trying to write music, too, because I just...gosh, I just felt so CREATIVE. And I wanted to be famous so bad, which is true. I really had wanted to be a famous singer, but I couldn't write to save my fucking life. My fellow aspiring divas didn't know that shit, though.
**As an aside, I used to harbor aspirations of being a poet, so I would write poems all the time. I remember getting up the courage to read my oeuvre to my mother one day to get an outside opinion of work that I held in the highest esteem. I was in the middle of reading my second work, a poem I held very close to my heart titled "Hold On To The Seams of Your Dreams', when my mom just crushed my spirit by breaking down into a fit of absolute hysterics, laughing at me, quoting me back to me in a way that ridiculed me, and I just kind of shuffled out of the kitchen, threw my notebook away on my way out, and went upstairs and cried. I never read my mom anything ever again, and I stopped writing poetry for a decade and a half.
I had picked out a Rockapella song weeks prior, and practiced the ever living fuck out of it. I figured out how to get the harmony parts right so it was just one note that I could cover and not sound weird, I wrote in words that made sense for some of the lyrics I couldn't figure out, I was fucking ON. THAT. SHIT.
When they all but shoved Randy out of the way to give me wide berth, I fucking owned our little lunchroom table. I took credit for something that wasn't mine and sang the fucking SHIT out of it, and I am here to tell you that my audience was ENRAPTURED. They applauded, they loved it, they wanted me to sing it again so they could learn it and we could all sing it.
I. Was. A. GODDESS.
They asked me if I had written anything else, and wouldn't you know it, I totally had, you guys, but it wouldn't be fair if everybody else didn't get their turn, so I'd share mine on my actual turn. I had fucking roped them in, because I got top spot for the next day, too.
And that's how that shit went for four songs. I taught them the songs, I glowed and peacocked and I was their fucking god, and I lapped up every ill-begotten crumb of praise they threw at me, and it was a lot. It had to stop at four songs, though. Not because I wanted the adoration to end, but because I...well...I couldn't understand all of the words to the rest of the songs on the album, one of them was Carmen Sandiego and there was a real danger of them knowing that and calling me on my audacious bullshit, two of them were covers of songs they could ALSO know, and still another was just....it was fucking too batshit crazy for them to believe I was capable of writing. I had to play it cool enough that I wasn't called out for the liar I was right away.
And I fucking NEVER was. I picked a really fucking obscure group and lived a lie that made me so happy. I never saw anything wrong with what I was doing, because it harmed nobody and I had zero artistic integrity. I was fucking twelve.
I've wondered every once and awhile if anybody remembers this shit, and if anybody ever accidentally heard a Rockapella song and labeled me a big fat fucking liar in their head the moment they did. I seriously doubt it, though. Rockapella is SERIOUSLY obscure unless you mention Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, but nobody ever follows that up with, "hey, so did those guys like, ever release music that wasn't for a PBS kid game show". I think my shitty secret about how I dethroned Randy from a place she rightly deserved to have is going to be safe to those girls forever, and I like it that way.
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