Broadway Baby

Today whilst driving in my car belting out Lady Gaga's "Speechless" I noticed that some gentlemen in the car next to me where having a good chuckle at my expense. Now, not only am I used to it, but I can't say that I blame them. When I'm in my car I don't just demurely sing along to the songs, I belt those babies out with all the emotion I can muster. Ever since I can remember I have loved to sing. When I was little (like 4) instead of introducing me to Raffie or normal kid stuff my mom had my sister and I listen to musicals. My love of Broadway was born. Amanda and I spent HOURS in our room with our taped recording of Broadway classics. My barbies and Playomobile people were Maria and Tony from West side Story or Tzeitel from Fiddler on the Roof. This might seem cute and funny...but my mom was setting me up for a life of dorkedom and furthermore when I was about 10 she decided to feed into my dreams of a future singing career by telling me that I had a nice voice and even that she would pay for voice lessons. Like any delusional idiot would, I believed her because I wanted to.

Around that same time I started having "trouble" in school. YEARS later I realized there was nothing wrong with me except I always had my head in the clouds and years of academic indifference had merely caught up with me. Anywho, on days when I really didn't want to go to school I would hide in this tiny cupboard in the kitchen until I knew the bus had come and gone. I would wait for my mom to leave for her morning jog and then I would blast Les Miserables in our living room. Sometimes I was Jean Val Jean other times I was Eponine and I thought I sounded really good, I would get really into it doing the acting along with the singing....then I would run upstairs and hide under the table in my moms bedroom before she got back from running.

One day I thought it might be fun to record myself singing...like I said I thought I had a beautiful voice. So I locked myself in my little brothers nursery with a tape recorder and with all my might sang "Hold On" from Secret Garden (the musical) once I was done I eagerly rewound the tape dreaming of my Tony Award. I pressed play and was shocked at what I heard..it sounded like two cats fighting over a squeaky toy. It really took the wind out of my sails but I reasoned with myself that I still had ballet.

I could go on and on but lucky for my family my bathroom/living room Broadway performances ended at about 15. Mostly because I got bored with it and got too busy for that sort of thing but also because the final musical I loved was Ragtime and while I'm sure the bathroom mirror was very convinced by my performances as Coalhouse Walker (an African American man in the ragtime era whose dreams are crushed by racism) I myself no longer believed it. And so the curtains closed on my Broadway Dreams forever.