At the end of my junior year, we had elections for the following year’s choir officers. I cannot stress enough how much I loved choir, how devoted I was to it. It was a very large part of my identity in high school. I needed to help run it. I had dreamed of being choir president for years, and there was no reason I shouldn’t be.
Other than, you know. I wasn’t super popular.
Reflecting now on the social habits of high school students, I was probably a bit of an outcast because of how shy I was. I’m still not the best at starting conversations and getting to know people, but that’s more forgivable when you’re an adult. I think as an adolescent, others assume you’re stuck up or don’t like them if you can’t initiate conversation. I was a bit elitist, and there were quite a few people I didn’t like, but there were plenty I was just plain neutral on.
Anyway, as elections drew nearer, I found out that K, the girl who tried to turn me and Sabrina against each other, also planned on running for president. I knew I stood no chance running against her. She fit in better with the whole choir and had a lot more friends than I did. I also knew she didn’t like me. I didn’t want to turn the election into a popularity contest that I was going to lose spectacularly. It was more important to me to be a choir officer than to be president, so I decided instead to run for vice president.
There was someone else running for vice president, another of the people who had been a member of my freshman class. He was a nice guy, but he didn’t have heaps of personality. I figured he was just running because K told him to. She didn’t want to have to work with me. While I wasn’t looking forward to being an officer with someone who detested me, I didn’t dislike her for any real reason. I was willing to put our differences aside.
The night before the elections, I ran into a choir member at a local pharmacy. She asked if I had written my speech yet, but I told her I wasn’t even planning one. I trusted I could speak from the heart and say what I needed to. When I got home, though, I overthought the interaction. If the position was that important, shouldn’t I put the effort in?
The next day, my friend Chris ran against K for president. K gave a great speech, listing all the ideas she had to raise money for the choir. Chris just kind of mumbled through something vague. I don’t even think I voted for him in the end because his talk was so lack luster.
Then it was time for the VP hopefuls. I don’t know who spoke first. The speech I gave didn’t have a lot of fund raising ideas, but it was all pathos, about my devotion to the group and how important it was to me. I was shaking and near tears when I finished, and I could tell others were moved, too.
Then my opponent gave his speech - in a polar bear costume. He spoke for about 10 seconds, simply agreeing with everything K said. No new ideas. Nothing about what choir meant to him. I couldn’t believe he would be as flippant as dressing as a polar bear to boot. There was no way, NO WAY, he was going to win his office.
But you know this is the section about my choir heartbreaks, don’t you?
I don’t know if officers were announced or posted, if it was later that day or the next. Whenever it was, to say it was a slap in the face to lose to a bear is such an understatement. I don’t know how to put into words how devastated I was, how unfair it all felt. I lived and breathed choir. And choir did not love me as much as I loved it. That was the bottom line.
I’ve never been mean spirited towards a teacher, but I was to Mr. Brown for the next few days. I stopped speaking to him. I talked to friends during class, completely disregarding anything he had to say and glaring at him when he shushed me. It was so unlike me that I can remember giving him this look one day, straight at him when he reprimanded me, like, Do. Not. Speak. To. Me. You broke my heart.
At some point, I stopped being a bitch. At some point he and I talked about it. He told me the difference between my opponent and me was seven votes. That the current officers had said to him once they saw the results, “We really thought the choir would do the right thing for once.” But there was nothing he could do.
Except, I told him, there was. He was the choir director. He could have overridden the decision. He knew us all well enough after three years to know who would be best for each position. If he really felt that the wrong people got elected, he could choose the officers. In fact, going forward, maybe that’s what he should do. (And, it should be known, the way the officers were chosen was changed from then on, and Mr. Brown had more of a say in it. So that was something that came out of the incident.)
My friend Chris printed out fliers about a “countergovernment” in which he was president, I was VP, Pete was treasurer, and Sabrina was secretary. That was a group I could have worked with. Truth be told, I wouldn’t have worked well with the group that was voted in. I wasn’t friends with K or my opponent or K2, and they would have excluded me from discussions and decisions. But I still wanted in.
And finally. And worst. There was another choir, a small group of 16 singers, two on each voice part, called Chamber Choir that I was dying to be a part of. I auditioned freshman year and never anticipated getting in. We had the talents of two amazing singers on first soprano. I was hopeful my sophomore year when they both graduated and their spots were open. Cheryl and Sabrina scored them, though. I knew there was a chance of that, so I reasoned that I’d be happy to have the open second soprano slot, and one of those should have easily gone to me. Instead, it went to a quiet, sweet girl who I'd never really noticed before. Where had she come from to snag my spot?! I was sad, particularly as a lot of my close friends got in that year. I didn’t begrudge any of them their spots, but I still wanted one myself. Mr. Brown spoke to my mom at parent-teacher conferences and explained that I have a “big voice,” and my sound would be hard to blend, which was the point of a small chamber choir. It felt like sort of a compliment, as at the time my ambition was to be a singer. But I still wanted to be a part of that group.
My junior year, there was no first soprano opening in Chambers, but there was a second soprano. Great. It was my turn. There was no one else auditioning who was as good as me, and all my friends knew it. I was so looking forward to getting into a group they were already a part of and I deserved to be in. I couldn’t help feeling down on myself whenever they had rehearsals or competitions I wasn’t a part of.
And then, out of absolutely nowhere, a freshman got in instead of me! I was livid. I had been part of this choir program for over two years already, and Mr. Brown knew how much I wanted into Chambers. I would only forgive the freshman if she got into the All State Choir that year, a group formed by the best singers in the state. She did, thus proving her vocal merit. And she turned out to be a really cool girl who we all got very close with. Fine. But still painful.
On came senior year, and FINALLY it was my turn. (Again.) Cheryl had graduated, so a first soprano spot was open . I was the only first besides Sabrina who had been in A Capella since my freshman year. It was beyond being my turn. I was a guaranteed shoe in.
And then, a few days before the auditions, I came down with bronchitis. Breathing, which is quite important for singing, became very difficult. I lost the upper registers of my voice. I did manage to get back to school on the day of auditions. I spent my lunch and study hall in a practice room, seeing what I could eek out, but it wasn’t much. I must have gone back to the choir room after the bell rang for the end of the day to see if I could muster up some voice. But I remember distinctly storming out in tears just before the auditions. I wanted Mr. Brown to come running after me. Really, I wanted him to have told me earlier in the day not to worry about the auditions, that after four years and tremendous persistence, he knew I deserved that spot whether I could sing at the auditions or not. And I hoped the next day, I would walk in and find out he had postponed announcing Chambers so I’d be able to try again or that he’d just let me in.
None of those things happened. He gave my part to someone else entirely.
I think my mom called to explain my heartbreak and despondency. Mr. Brown knew I wanted to go into musical theater, and he maintained that auditioning through sickness or dealing with disappointments like this would become a regular part of my life. He wanted to get me used to the feeling now. Never mind that this was high school. And that I had been through the disappointing heart break twice before. And that, no matter what he was trying to train me for, it was still just high school. Mr. Brown and I were very close, and I’m sure he was trying to teach me a lesson as a father might. Instead, I was just devastated, not to mention embarrassed. Lower classman than me were in that choir. Other choir members knew how devoted I was. And I was still excluded from my friends when those Chamber Choir times came.
Funny enough, at the end of the school year as yearbooks were being signed, the girl who got into Chambers instead of me asked to read the very long paragraph Mr. Brown wrote in my yearbook. I hadn’t read it yet, and I handed it over for her to see. When she finished, she coolly slid the book back to me and turned away. Later that night, when I read the signature myself, I understood. Mr. Brown had expressly written that he had made a mistake and should have taken me into Chambers instead of Other Girl. Yikes! I felt bad that she had read it, but I had no control over that! And at least I knew that Mr. Brown recognized his mistake. But it didn’t make up for not getting a thing I wanted so badly for three years.
Now I can hear anyone reading this saying to themselves, “Hold on. This is an organization you loved and we’re dedicated to and have just spent at least three pages transcribing the times it broke your heart. What was so great about it?”
Everything.
I recognize I sound a bit conceited, talking about how good a singer I am/was. I did have a bit of a chip on my shoulder. But it was also somewhat founded. There were compliments from peers and adults. Solos. Admission to select choirs. I deserved at least some of my confidence.
Somewhere about seventh grade, I decided I wanted to be a pop star. Gaining entrance to a group like A Capella choir confirmed that I had vocal talent. It made me feel special to be part of a group as a freshman that most weren’t until later in their school career. I thought I was a good singer, I wanted to be a good singer, I WAS a good singer.
When my middle school students fret about how much social trouble there’ll be when they get to high school, I tell them how much easier high school generally is. Kids in TV dramas about high school really act more like middle school children. Making friends has never been my strongest suit, but A Capella gave me a social group from the word go. That's the thing with high school- for the first time, you make friends based more on what you have in common with people than who you have in common. You get to choose classes and activities and start to gravitate towards those who share common interests. The majority of people I still see from Edison are the ones I sang with.
We spent a lot of time together. Of course, there was second period every day for four years. After school Mondays for Treble choir. Thursdays for show choir. Many a Friday night was spent at Applebee’s enjoying half priced appetizers after 10. (Onion peels were my app of choice.) There were night time concerts, and, of course, the annual choir trips.
There are so many wonderful memories. I sat in the last row at the back of the room, on the aisle across from the tenors, next to Cheryl and, later, Sabrina. There was a lot of nonverbal communication - hand signals, giggling, eye rolling at stupidity. Sometimes we changed lyrics to include ridiculous “your mom” jokes. We used to do a warm up using the nonsense words “Lah-May dah-May nee-po too,” which Sabrina changed to, “Your mom is a fucking whore.” It was sung with a lot of good nature, no anger at all. One time, Mr. Brown was circulating as we were singing this and we had to switch words mid phrase - “Your mom is a fucking too!” Lots of giggles.
A Capella Choir sang at graduation annually, so while most students only had to suffer through a two hour ceremony in a sweltering hot, non-air conditioned sports center once, I had the pleasure four times. It was dreadfully boring. Junior year, Sabrina and I invented a game we called “G-day scratch off.” We had a graduation program listing all the seniors. That year, we followed along with a pen in hand and crossed out the names of anyone who didn’t get announced with a maniacal giggle. We… were pretty elitist, as I already noted.
The choir always learned some kind of inspirational song for graduation. Twice in my four years it was Whitney Houston’s “One Moment in Time,” which my friends and I practiced using the words “One Night With Your Mom.”
“Your mom” jokes were the height of comedy at the time. We were young and stupid, but at least we were that together.
Every year, the band and choir program participated in “Festivals of Music,” competitions that took place near amusement parks somewhere we had to take coach buses to get to. My freshman year, I decided to officially go on the band trip, meaning I paid through the band and had to room with band people. One of my best friends was in color guard, and I wanted to room with her. Because I participated in more choirs than bands, though, my schedule ended up a little confusing and hard to juggle. The marching band competition was underwhelming - instead of doing our show, all bands learned a version of “America the Beautiful” and marched in a block down the boardwalk. Wasn’t worth my time and effort - never did the band competition again.
That year, our trip was to Virginia Beach. I had actually developed a crush on my friend, and I spent most of that trip flirting with him and eventually cuddling up with him, though we didn’t start dating until after we got home. (It was a very innocuous relationship that lasted a month. It ended when he gave me a very chaste peck on the lips before I got on the bus that day, and after overthinking the situation, I realized that was about as far as I wanted that to go.) It rained on us a lot on the final day of the trip when we were in Busch Gardens, so having someone to cuddle with helped. Especially after I went on the rapids ride and got soaking wet!
Sophomore year - I was disappointed when they announced our trip would be to Ocean City, MD. Just a four hour bus ride! Not nearly long enough to be ridiculous with friends. However, this ended up being my favorite trip. More time at our destination was definitely better than the bus! We got to walk up and down the boardwalk and enjoy the Lazy River in our hotel.
But my strongest memory of that trip is the most absurd I had on any. I had decided I wanted to attempt not just putting nail tips on myself but finishing them with acrylic. It didn’t look that hard. I brought all the materials with me and one afternoon, I did nails for my friends. Sabrina, Cheryl, and Maria were rooming with me, and Pete and Chris came to hang out. I worked for at least two hours, bent over hands applying the acrylic powder. When I finished, someone in the room said something that was only mildly humorous- and Chris and I absolutely could not stop laughing. We doubled over and laughed until tears poured down our cheeks.
No one could understand why we were laughing quite so hard. Then we realized that I’d been inhaling nail acrylic fumes in an unventilated room for two straight hours. I must have gotten slightly high! Chris was also affected even though no one else was. Meanwhile, my parents chaperoned the trip, and we had a group dinner reservation shortly after the realization! My friends did my best to keep me away from my parents when we ate at Jonah and the Whale, a seafood buffet my mom maintains is one of the worst places she’s ever eaten. I really have no idea what the food tasted like!
Junior year we went to Myrtle Beach. We had to be at school around 10:00 at night since the bus ride was somewhere around 12 hours. We were supposed to sleep on the busses, and with the aid of my disc man, I didn’t do toooooo badly. We briefly stopped at South of the Border, but only adults were allowed off the bus, which disappointed us. Other than that, I don’t remember a lot about the trip. I think we spent some time at the shopping area Boardwalk at the Beach. I think we went to a NASCAR themed amusement park that wasn’t as awful as I thought it might be. I KNOW there was an incident where two kids disappeared on the beach together after curfew and we were almost not allowed on a trip the next year. But thankfully, we were.
Senior year, it was back to Virginia, but this time we stayed in Williamsburg. Maria and Cheryl had graduated. Though we were supposed to room in groups of 4, Sabrina and I had no one else we wanted to share space with, and Mr. Brown seemed to sense that we might revolt if he tried to force the issue. But having our own room was the highlight of this trip. The weather was terrible a lot of the time. One of the days, we were supposed to go to an outlet center, but a lot of choir members complained about not having money, so we just went back to the hotel. There was no Lazy River at this one, just a lot of lazing around. We were stuck with nothing to do for half a day - and Colonial Williamsburg was just down the street! It was a frustrating waste of time.
At each competition, of course, our music departments cleaned up. We came home with first place trophy on top of first place trophy. The only time I can remember losing is when we saw another treble choir give a featured performance at an awards ceremony, and we were all humbled by their talent when they performed a song called “Fall Leaves Fall.” We didn’t mind taking the silver to them! Some of our soloists also took home personal awards for their contributions.
All of this - the awards, the trips, the camaraderie, the drive to be nothing but our best - was only possible because of our amazing choir director, Mr. Ken Brown. I first encountered Mr. Brown at my audition for A Cappella Choir in eighth grade. He was a well groomed man who ALWAYS wore a suit and exuded a serious, focused nature, and I was terrified of him. Even though I was ecstatic to experience choir on my first day of high school, I was scared to have to sit through a class with Mr. Brown. How could we ever have fun with someone so straight laced?
The answer was simple - Mr. Brown wasn’t nearly as serious as I perceived him to be. Yes, he was an extremely accomplished pianist, and yes, he did always dress impeccably. (Except on Halloween, when he annually busted out a track suit to be a gym teacher.) And sure, there were times when we had to buckle down to learn hard pieces of music. But most of the time, we laughed and had fun and felt personally valued while creating beautiful music together. I can still hear the quiet, bashful chuckle he gave when embarrassed by a compliment or a showing of affection from students. I also remember the time someone suggested singing the “Hallelujah Chorus” at graduation, and Mr. Brown cried, “That would be like doing THIS (he held up his middle finger) to the administration!” His relationship with us was so strong that we all laughed til we cried at that one.
I was a good, sometimes great, student. I stayed in all honors classes until I voluntarily dropped out of math and science my junior year to take some pressure off myself. I excelled at English, and I adored Spanish class (until sophomore year, but that’s another story). AP Social Studies was a bonding experience for those of us who braved Mr. Clausen’s notoriously nearly impossible class. But nothing compared to the comfortable feeling I got every day upon walking into the choir room, where I felt I truly belonged and excelled. I was able to exercise an entirely different skill set that transcended age and academic ability and allowed those of us who would never have had classes together to mix and meld. It gave us a break and challenged us at the same time.
It’s a huge part of why we loved Mr. Brown. We could be different, truer selves with him than with other teachers. He understood that and nurtured our personalities as well as our voices. He saw me in triumphant moments, like making A Capella and gaining entrance to Woman’s Regional Choir my senior year. He saw me break down in absolute tears when I couldn’t audition for Chambers my senior year. He saw it all.
A funny story to prove how well Mr. Brown knew me - senior year, our graduating class voted on superlatives - you know, Best Looking, Best Dressed, Nicest Eyes - stupid, meaningless things like that that mostly serve to make people feel bad about themselves when they don’t earn any. I was gunning for most musical, even though I didn’t stand a snowball’s chance. I wasn’t popular. In a class of 500, there was no way that most people were going to vote for me.
I was in the Student Council meeting when the votes were tallied, and a girl I'll refer to as K2 won. K2 was a cheerleader, so people knew her. But other than singing, there was nothing musical about her. She had also been accepted to A Capella Choir as a freshman, but I thought her voice was much weaker than mine. She didn’t play any instruments. She didn’t aspire to be a professional musician. She won because she could yell before ball games in a skirt. I went home and wrote a post for my OpenDiary (the blog of 2003) where I said as much.
A little backstory - I had known K2 since elementary school. We bonded over the movie Clueless in fourth grade, but in fifth grade, when I had a heartbreaking falling out with my best friends, K2 told me to my face that she was siding with them and didn’t want to be friends with me anymore. I reconciled with the other friends because we really did have a lot in common, but K2 and I never really spoke again.
The morning after my blog post, Pete informed me that K2's younger brother (also in choir) had found it through a mutual friend and showed it to his sister. In retaliation, she was going around telling people I must be anorexic since I had lost a lot of weight quickly. (I was a pretty fat kid, but I shed the weight in high school through a mix of embarrassingly being weighed by the school nurse once a week to ensure I didn’t continue to gain at the alarming rate I was, balancing my meals, exercising, and puberty.)
Mr. Brown caught wind of the situation and was scared for me. After four years of working together, he knew I was very sensitive. He must have also sensed that the power dynamic favored K2. He decided to call us both into his office after class so we could talk it out, and so that an adult could mediate should the situation get ugly.
What Mr. Brown didn’t know about me, I guess, is that I am a master overthinker. Had K2 approached me in the hall and called me anorexic in front of everyone, I wouldn’t have had a comeback. But knowing for an entire period that I was going to be alone in a room with her gave me time to plan out what I was going to say. In fact, I didn’t give Mr. Brown a second to try to make nice between us when we got to his office. I calmly and coolly looked at K2 and said, “K2, are we friends?”
“No,” she replied flatly.
“We haven’t been friends in year,” I continued matter-of-factly. Seriously, there was no bitch in my tone at all. Just even tempered truth. “So why do you care what I say about you?”
For once, I was able to leave someone else speechless. She had no comeback. Neither did Mr. Brown, who couldn't believe how well I had handled the situation. He thought I was going to need protecting, and I did a lot of the time. But not that day. Maybe I had grown up more than either of us had realized during high school. Maybe I just felt safe in the space of Mr. Brown’s office.
Which, to be fair, was like a home away from home for many of us choir kids. My senior year, my friends and I got tired of the noisy cafeteria and opted instead to eat in Mr. Brown’s office. Sabrina and I had study hall after lunch with a group of kids we then considered far inferior, so we stayed in the office through that hour, too. Why Mr. Brown let a bunch of 17 year old kids monopolize his lunch and prep period is beyond me. We didn’t bother him much, but I know I, as a teacher, like to have some down time most days. I can’t always be bothered with kids. But he never asked us to leave. He even let me use his computer every day, which I did to write in my Open Diary. Mostly, I was corresponding with a guy I had never met but was still romantically interested in from the far away land of Wales…
In spring of 2003, I received an invitation to Senior Awards Night, where school related scholarships were handed out. My friend Chris got the biggest choir scholarship, and it made sense as he was one of our most talented singers. He was ranked as one of the top 10 tenors in the state of NJ that year. But then they announced the Carrie Haskins Scholarship. Mrs. Haskins had been the esteemed choir director prior to Mr. Brown, and she was legendary even years after her retirement. Though the amount of money the scholarship awarded wasn’t life changing, when my name was announced in conjunction with Mrs. Haskins’s, I felt like Buffy when her class bestows the special protector award upon her. (Not that I would know this at the time since I didn’t watch “Buffy” for another two years, but it’s an apt metaphor now.) There was a quiet honor in the award that told me Mr. Brown recognized the importance the choir held in my soul and my heart.
It is one of the sadnesses of my life that I haven’t stayed in touch with Mr. Brown. I did try, emailing him throughout my freshman year of college, but technology was never his strong suit, so he wasn’t good at keeping up the correspondence. He retired in 2021, but as we were still COVID cautious, plans for a large-scale retirement party fell through. A choir member five years younger than me put together a video for Mr. Brown of messages we could record on our own. I sent a video as well as my contact information, but I haven’t heard from Mr. Brown. I hope someday, we can reconnect and catch up on life.
My love of choir singing never dissipated after high school. During my freshman year of college, I sang in choir and traveled to Disney World to participate in their Music in the Parks series . But once I transferred colleges, I didn't get the chance to sing with a group again. There was an emptiness in me for some years until, nearly a decade after I graduated from college, a friend invited me to sing in a choir with her. It was like a homecoming, singing with adults who all cared greatly about the music we were making. The atmosphere of Rise Up Chorus rehearsals is similar to that of the Edison High Choir - lots of fun, lots of joking around, camaraderie, and caring. Of course, it continues to affirm the question of my talent - I earned a solo I really wanted in a choral version of “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” A few years after that, I was offered a solo, without even having to audition, in an original piece we commissioned for our fifth anniversary. I had planned to audition as being the first to ever perform the piece in public seemed really cool. And then our director just gave it to me, no questions asked, other than if I wanted to do it.
This is not to say I think I’m the hottest hot shot in the choir. I constantly doubt myself. When the director tells the soprano section that we’re flat or someone has a “spread” sound rather than a focused one, I always think it’s me. I know there are plenty of people who sound better than I do. But, after all I’ve been through, I know enough to know that I’m not untalented. To know I can sing well and pick up music quickly, and I can sing my part confidently enough to be a leader in my section. It gives me a sense of pride among the fun and often reminds me how to listen to others and work together to achieve beautiful things.
Someone recently said to me that there’s a great deal of intimacy in a choir. You have to put a lot of trust in others. You have to listen while you sing, be in time, be in tune, harmonize. You have to work in conjunction with others to create an experience that you are a small part of that can create big enjoyment. While I may not be the professional pop star I once hoped to be, my history with and continuation in choirs will continue to bring joy to myself and others for years to come. It will keep me humble and proud in strange harmony, and it will keep me wrapped in the cloak of musicality that holds me in its warm, safe arms. It will feed my artistic soul in a way only music can.
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