Singing

Singing.......definitely not my talent. I have other talents, so I don't feel to badly about not being able to carry a tune - except that I love to sing. My mother says I am always flat and a half beat behind - she is correct. My mother can sing and so can the Princess, but they don't like to sing like I do. I sing a lot. I can really ratchet up the volume too (I learned how to do that while working on a bus route to carry kids to church.) Only the family gets to hear the song of the Valkyrie, but it is legend. It does seem to get kids up out of bed in the morning, and the dog doesn't even howl - oops, we don't have a dog!

Back in the college years (and those bus route years) I was actually in a church choir and a college glee club! I had two really great friends (they would have to be!) that made sure they always stood next to me and we had a hidden signal (elbow in the ribs) whenever I flatted out. I even learned to do some songs pretty well. In college I sang in a Christmas special with all the combined school choirs. I sang the alto part of Handel's Messiah - the whole thing - and only got a few elbow-to-the-ribs during that entire performance. Granted my little voice was only one of about 300, but in practices it was only one of about 40. That could have created havoc.

Are you ready for the irony? My mother actually named me Patti Page! Really. Not even Patricia - but Patti - right there on my birth certificate. Such a cruel twist of fate - or was it hope? Well that hope was dashed at an early age. She knew by the time I was three I couldn't carry a tune. How you ask? (You did ask, right?) Because my grandfather had a state of the art sound system in his home and in the early years I was often asked to sing "How Much Is That Doggie In The Window" for any and all guests. It was blasted to every nook and cranny in his very large home. By the time I was five, such requests for the "doggie song" grew rare - they learned - I did not live up to my namesake.

Plus side to being Patti Page:
I was never anonymous - I was the first name every teacher knew on the first day of school.

Down side to being Patti Page:
I was never anonymous - I was the first name every teacher knew on the first day of school.

Biggest annoyance to being Patti (you don't need the "Page" for this part):
All those insistent teachers and rude "official people" that think I don't know my own legal first name. "No, I am not a Patricia; my name is Patti (with an "i"). Would you like to see my birth certificate?"

I e-mailed Patti Page a while back. I told her I had the same name as she did. (She wasn't actually born a "Patti" like me - I didn't say that to her, though.) She was very nice and wrote me back - though of course I didn't print it out before I lost my copy in a computer crash, oh well. I am on her mailing list for her maple syrup products, and I visit her website from time to time. I even have some of her CD's. I am not too keen on the "doggie song", but I love the Tennessee Waltz - that is probably my favorite of her songs. I don't have her Christmas CD - I probably need to get that one soon.

For me, heaven will be full of songs - fun, glorious, on-key, right pitch, correct timing, very loud songs!

(btw - since 1980, Dh has robbed me of my fame. I can no longer claim to be a "Page", but I do still get the snide remarks asking for my "legal" first name - "Are you sure you aren't Patricia?")